(Sipping Sonnet: Snack-sized Retellings)

The walls can hear you, they say. You’re being watched at all times. Often by those you suspect least – the nearest in blood or the dearest of friends.

Your idea of yourself becomes a distant blur seen through the other’s lens. Better to be the monster they claim, when not being one earns you the same name. Why lose that pleasure – not by your fault but by others’ doing?

Yes, you have shortcomings. You, too, sometimes give in to your weaknesses. There’s great power in being able to see your flaws. Some are meant to be mended, others worn with pride. Why, then, should those with weaker stomachs bring shame to your strengths?

No. Don’t give in. You are what you are. Those who claim to call out your flaws rake up their own. They’ve strayed away from finding comfort in their own skin. Walk your own path. Let not your worth, your thoughts, and your deeds be defined by the shallow thoughts of the malevolent few.

Tread the dark path on one condition and one condition only. Let those who paint you black from shadows first confess, that all men are evil and let their badness reign.

Sonnet 121 by William Shakespeare

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;

Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad and in their badness reign.