I am special because my parents told me so
when I was small.
Now I am the nouveau poor
living on credit with which I will deal later,
when I am spiritually healed
and making a lot of money helping people.
But right now I’m doing
an inner gig.

My mother, who my therapist
insists, abused me,
owes me big-time.
She goes to therapy too,
for co-dependency
and pays big bucks for me to attend
new-age workshops at adult summer camps
where I can get an inner child.

I learn to create with my thoughts
what my higher-self deserves,
instead of wasting my valuable time
as a working class robot
in the world of illusion.
I don’t need much
beyond a middle class existence
and what I do need someone else should give me
since enlightenment is only a thought away.

You probably think I’m cute
in my helpless, coy
female, moments
and you’re right—I’m "absolutely adorable",
that’s what my aunts and uncles said when I was tiny—
I got regressed and can even remember!

You should always understand me; appreciate my being
different;
award my artistic sensibilities; my innocent, natural
flirtatiousness;
the harmless ways I exquisitely express
my feelings when you scare me with your hardness.

If I do something inappropriate by mean, grown-up,
standards,
you of course, if you’re any kind of friend, or family

(what’s the difference we’re all connected!)
will smile and wish you had my uninhibited flare.
And maybe I will tell you about our past lives
together;
or channel and teach you the real way to be—
"...in the world, but not of it", like me.

Because I am so unusual you will want me on your team
even though I never bothered to learn to play by the
rules.
You will always make exceptions for me
because I am brilliant or at least eccentric.
A middle-aged rebel, or a washed up woman
whatever cross I bear so nobly,
should elicit your compassion.
You should take care of me and
protect me, even from myself
because I am so irreproachably sensitive—
else I may become suicidal like Sylvia Plath
if you don’t notice me.

You should understand—or change the policies—
when I lose my library books or forget to pay bills.
You should always appreciate how hard it is
to be growing up at 40.

Someday I will be famous
and you will berate yourself
for treating me like a child.
And when you die you will look back and realize
you should have been more like me.