Compromise

It's funny what people will put up with in the spirit of "compromise". What people will ignore to keep the peace. we all have a friend who we find slightly repulsive, who's views offend or make us feel slightly uncomfortable and yet either out of habit or duty we keep them around.
I have seen girls look with slightly wistfully eyes, smiles frozen in place as they laugh at jokes they don't find funny, squinting as they try to make that boy who they wish he was.
it is easy to see how atrocities are committed and allowed to continue with little more than i murmur of protest. Mark Twain said that a classic is a book that everybody wishes to have read, but nobody wants to read. i understand this.  when there are wrongs glaringly obvious, everyone wants to have been the one to stop them. and yet it is only a tiny few who can. who dare to stand up and kick the shit out of the elephant in the corner because, fear holds us back.
i watched this girl watch my flatmate as he prowled around the room. overt masculinity wrapped around childlike fear. discretion is the better part of valour, silence the better part of masculinity.
her eyes followed him around the room while he shouted obscene things about minorities. ignorance dressed as irony, poorly disguised as wit. is this who she imagined when she thought of her perfect partner?
is he who she thought of in her sleep?
probably not.
but in the name of compromise she'll take her into her self, let him leave his marks in her body on her skin and tomorrow her memory will paint him prettier, funnier,sweeter than he is.
but tonight i see the corners of her eyes twitch as she forces out a laugh, the way her hands clutch the sofa when he comes too close and the way she winces when he talks about other girls around her.
bless me with the self awareness never to be her.
or the blindness not to care.