Espada y daga

Your value is you do not make the usual mistake. Your mistake is the mistake of the very few.
Glad you cleaned me up. I lose, I practice, I spar, I lose, I practice. This makes sense.

Not that you learn.
I change.

I speak well of you. Have you been listening? Kindly remember your first tournament.
You called me a “head-hunter” so calmly, didn’t realize it was spit.

Going for the double points with almost every other move. It made for a fine show.
To the untrained eye.

You were predictable by the tenth step.
I thought you said the fourteenth?

Ninth. I had been encouraging you. Lies have that capacity.
It’s a history of failure, I get it.

I have been speaking well of you. Today was exquisite: you never did repeat a target.
I thought I’d rather fight predictability than fuss about you.

Which meant you never making the same move twice. Never a target repeated.
Many happy returns—

Which meant I could hide in the bruise you gave me. Then I could strike from there.
Yes. Now I see it. That’s what did it.

The curtains of your enemy thicken the longer a fight like that draws on.
If perceptive. If you give me time, will I learn?

You need every advantage youth can afford you. Fresh citrus, every now and then.
But will I learn?

Leave your wife some peace and a good pillow. Avoid people with weak fathers.
Excuse me?

Likewise, people without fathers.
Okay.

Do not warm to the flames of those who have known little of the sun.
But they’re all around me. They’re my job.

Only if you have to listen. Their words are but velvet animals.
They’re the reason I train with you.

Never touch them as they touch back. They like to lead by the hand. They think it is that simple.
Have to follow where the knowledge takes me.

Nor can they take themselves as anything but toys. It is as far as they go.
You can’t make a rule of this. Look, some of them are serious.

Are playing at being serious. And may take as much delight in that atmosphere as in others.
I have been spending my days to overcome my father’s oversight.

Only the strong may lose strength. Others look strong, and the world would like to kiss them for it.
Because they’re always children.

Keep them ever away from yours.
I’m taking the job.