Exile exhale, dive through the secret door, what, who, me? I’m impossibly irrelevant. I avoid it.

On my fridge there’s this worn faded scrap of pink paper it used to be red paper but I washed it in a pair of jeans and now I wear a fuzzy faded pink ink part of it on my ass.

It says in a true friend’s handwriting

Defy Consumerism
Ignore the Media
Seek Mystery
Be Alone

Don’t buy anything and don’t answer the phone. If holding the palm outward doesn’t ward it off then deny its existence turn three times to the left before every answer, power lies in threes and sevens.

Tomorrow it’s into the belly of the beast with me, through security, and since I know they’re coming I’ll make it through. The grandmotherly security lady told me last time if she had to check everyone’s shoes she’d take a jump out the window, and she nodded at the big tinted security glass, above the tops of the tree branches.

An airplane went silently sweeping across the sky.

And since I know they’re coming, and since I’m irrelevant and incognito and unimportant, I’ll wait, breathing slowly, until I see the reds of their optics.

I only regret I won’t be wearing those jeans.