Discretion

I cannot say that I was always discreet as a younger woman.

I was modest.

I watched my language.

I didn’t want to offend.

But I also lifted my shirt at the putt-putt course

when my friends dropped a hole-in-one,

(My seriously average boobs were starved for attention.)

I drank in high school, and bought whiskey

for my underage coworkers in my twenties.

In some cases, I was fairly flagrant with my rule-breaking.

Most of the “rules” I broke were suggestions, really,

or unwritten.

Unwritten by someone I didn’t know, so I didn’t care.

Or they were written, but decades before, and stored in a dusty volume about etiquette.

I never read those books.

I’m fifty-three, and discretion has taken on a new meaning.

I am no longer quite so modest.

I no longer watch my language.

I don’t worry about offending – I say what I think.

But —

I use discretion when I determine who I interact with.

I use discretion when I choose my battles with my son.

I use discretion when I decide where to focus my time.

Using discretion allows me to be less discreet.

Maybe there’s a paragraph in a book somewhere about how this is cheat;

a workaround that is more like avoiding the “rules”

and simply making up my own.

But I haven’t read that book.

This poem is being posted as part of the #100dayproject. Find out more here.

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