The other day I was trying to get my peeps, a group of adults with disabilities, to write a group poem.  I taped a piece of paper on the wall and had my magic marker at the ready. They were sooooo not feeling it. Good luck getting these folks to do something they don’t want to.  Even the couple of staff who were there– kids in their 20s – weren’t rising to the occasion.  So I gave up. Instead, I decided to just write down what they were all saying, the words and phrases that were swirling all around the room.

Don’t steal my grapefruit!
I think my favorite word is “chastise.”
Kill the fly!
You have to put water in that
You can come to my house and sleep over
Then there’s “defenestration”
I don’t think I’m allowed
I’m not doing anything to you!
I took my jacket off
Ralph said it, not the lion,
Don’t steal my fruit
I’m looking up a recipe to make Swedish meatballs
My head is itchy
How do you deal with your allergies?
They put dill in it
I don’t talk about it, unless I get a rash, and then I talk about it all the time.
I was BURNING with sweat!
Kill the fly!
He just swore at me, out of the blue
Sometimes people do things and they don’t even know why
Maybe he didn’t even know he did it
Kill the fly!

I know, right? As if this wasn’t great enough, when we went out for a walk a little bit later I found a scrap of paper on the sidewalk, a page from a book. My policy is always to pick up scraps of paper that have writing on it. There’s always a chance the universe put it there to send me a message.

Here’s what I read:

“Dawn’s jaw tightens. ‘You’re exactly right, I probably should have sent us without the park ranger. And we would have been spared the poaching and the near beaver attack.’

You also would have been almost killed in the beaver den and having me explain this state of affairs to momma and papa. The only reason we aren’t turning back now is because we’re almost there.

“We start walking across an open field and I pull up a piece of timothy and start chewing the end of it, Only it’s dry and tastes like straw. I spit it on the ground and keep walking behind Dawn, hoping like crazy that the Wise Woman is around the next bend.”

Funny, I thought, I’m always looking for her, too.