Virtues by Aaron Flynn

It Takes Courage

It takes courage
to admit
you are a coward;
to draw
sharpened steel
across your flesh;
to inhale
the exhaust fumes
from a car as though it were
a salt-tanged breeze.
Please.
It takes courage to be a coward.
The Lion was wrong.
Courage and cowardice
are not opposites,
they are bedfellows.
They are
the most intimate of partners,
joined at the groin,
at their loins,
separated only by
perspective
and nothing
else.