Security Measure

As burdensome as shyness is
Could anyone afflicted say
It hasn’t saved at least one life?                                                      

Anyone who’s lost a life
Once strongly tethered to, that is – 
A hers or his – of which they’d say, 

If pressed, there’s little else to say
But that they’d lost the love of their life.
Love made them brave. Now shyness is

What fidelity is, they’d say: the way of life.

First published, in an earlier version, in Podium, Vol. 15