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she sends me messages often in quotes because she knows I read them
she comes disguised as learned men and nobodies preachers and mumblers
sometimes days in a row sometimes years
for sometimes I am keen other times dense

I gather the bits of wisdom that haven’t fallen between porch planks
I smooth them across my breast hoping they will sink in
I snap at them with my teeth as they somersault upon the air
I search for them deep in flowers and rise powder-nosed and foolish

at the end of days like now
drugged with carelessness melting into shapelessness
I feel them settle on my lashes
“be independent of the good opinion of others”

she whispers them wet against my lobes
“when you require no approval you will own yourself”
presses into my sleeper’s pout
“their opinion of you is none of your business”

one last lesson she leaves curled within my palm
“no one ever goes away, until they teach us what we need to know”
and I will wake with the knowledge of this thing
and the persistent inability to feel it

“Quotations gleaned from the works of Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, Terry Cole-Whittaker and Pema Chodron, in that order.”