She can talk to squirrels
with the same sense
of ease she addresses
everyone she encounters
in the grocery store
each and every morning,
the young mother she lectured
about how easy she had it,
the stock boy who scoured
shelves tirelessly for everlasting peas
or the gentleman half her age
who simply smiled while she insisted
they had once danced in 1958.
From a worn park bench the dialogue
continues to roll off her tongue,
occasionally curtained by her lips,
thin, quivering but mostly longing
for the time they garnered attention
and would only speak when spoken to.
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