Don’t be Malvolio.
Avoid yellow socks.
Learn how to laugh at a mirror.
Don’t be a Belch,
a dissipate trickster,
squandering trust for a joke.
Don’t be Maria
writing false letters
for the mere sake of fooling a fool.
Be a Viola.
Go to Illyria,
but don’t wear the lie of another.
Be true and be open,
though you go awry.
Mix freely with workers in words
in trusty Illyria,
where literature winks
and belly laughs holding a mirror,
an image of us just as we are,
trying so hard to be loved.
May 2016