Sweetness

I thought I had been clear about it, but as the details of my unrequited affection have been shared, several of you have revealed your violent sides. Let me be absolutely clear. I do not want any of you to get on a plane, then fly to the city of his residence, disembark from the aircraft, then proceed to his address, then ring one of his neighbors and claim to be delivering a package in order to get buzzed into the apartment building, then steal up the one flight of stairs to his apartment, kick his door in and serve him that most filling of delicacies: a knuckle sandwich. That is exactly the type of thing that you cannot do. Mary, I am looking at you. That's right, I used your name. What are you going to do about it?

If something is truly yours and you let it go, then it will come back to you, unless it suffers a debilitating fall down its apartment stairs that knocks it unconscious and suffers several broken ribs, almost as if it had been kicked repeatedly. Then it will not come back to you. It will stay away and rue the day it turned its back on you.

As a consolation to using her name I'm going to print a poem here by a Mary, who may or may not be the same Mary although really how many Mary's can one person know?

this is just to say

by mary mary mary

I have finally

defrosted in my

home that is like

the icebox

and from which

you were probably

thinking

you'd never hear from me again

Forgive me

I'm soaking in the sun that is

so sweet

and so warm.

I think the thing I like best about this submission is that it varies so little from the original. I think Mr. Williams was a true poet, but if a truer poet came along could she not speak more directly to our souls, by changing just one word in Mr. Williams' poem? Could she change the meaning altogether? I think Mary has done a fine job here saying something completely different while retaining at least a line from every stanza. Yes, I think we can all marvel at this accomplishment.

However, I do not want this glint of praise to go to anyone's head. You can't seek it out. That action cheapens it. Let me describe another situation to show you what I mean. Imagine, and I know this will be hard to do, since it is so terribly unlike me, it may actually help to substitute someone else for me in the following scenario, but imagine if you will that I contacted you in the middle of your day when you least needed to be bothered and fished in a round about way for feedback and compliments on my postings here. Wouldn't you weep for me? You would cry the soft, giant tears of someone trying not to cry, but unable to stop themselves, because the person in this scenario would be truly pathetic, like the people you see at the mall going into Old Navy.

What a relief it must be to know I would never do that. I don't even like going to a shopping center if I know there is an Old Navy there.