I type the caption to my piece with a smidge of hedging in case everyone fucking hates it.
The rest comes from the residual shame of the previous captions I dared to type before a frenzied delete.
How dare I?
I mean, don’t we all feign surprise when someone kindly calls us beautiful?
“Like, omg, you really think so?”
And how can my response to “you’re so smart,” be anything other than a hand over heart
and, “really? That’s so nice of you to say!”
Me- a woman- freely expressing my virtues?
The discomfort- nay- the horror I would have caused by putting my confidence all out there,
all boldly and whatnot.
My bad.
So I press enter, and reduce my brilliance to - a thing.
Phew,
I was so close to being a bitch.