Perhaps my biggest foible
is to try to hide my foibles:

If I succeed
I have no safety net,
no understanding hands of friends
who have learned how to catch me
when I fall

And when I fail
(at least, at times, it’s been like this)
I am the last to know,
the last to see, with grateful eyes,
those steadfast and ironic hands
of friends who know this foible
and don’t tell me,
kindly shielding me
from the imagined fall
of seeing I’m not perfect after all.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 27, 2014