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Vera Kilgore Heilig: Her Poetry Lives (2017) H. Morris Williams, Marie Law Haire
Group Therapy
She sat across the circle from me everyday
And joined us in the probing of ourselves,
Open to all, letting it all hang out.
Pretending to.
Her comments more revealed than hid
A deep distrust, a guarded wariness.
She held a carefully carved mask before her
Like a ping-pong paddle with a painted face,
Making believe its features were her own.
I watched it everyday and wondered why.
Weren’t we all there to help each other?
Even I had laid my natural reticence aside,
Discussing things I’d never talked about before.
I didn’t ask the others if they saw her mask,
And no one mentioned it,
But still I wondered.
One day she spoke to me directly, and accusingly,
“You never let your feelings show.
You talk, but no one really knows
What you are thinking.”
Taken aback, I told myself: It must be true,
That saying I have heard.
It really does take one to know one.
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