INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE LEAVING ~ rough draft!
by April Halprin Wayland
Don’t taste them.
Don’t tear them.
Just try on and wear them.
If you take my shoe (as I know that you do)
well, bury your nose in it, give it a smell.
Let it remind you of who you know well.
I know that you miss me,
I know that you’re blue.
Don’t compound the problem by shredding my shoe!
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I have a poetry ideas file. The note I’d written last May was:
“Eli takes my shoes but these days he doesn’t hurt them. It’s just sort of an Eli exclamation mark saying, NOTICE ME!”
This poem turned to rhyming and veered away from Notice Me into just, well, just rhyme. If I had more time, I would want to make NOTICE ME the focus of this poem.