Graphite

I found your letter on the back of a framed

photograph, one you gave me years ago,

when we hung

from the window of your third story flat

as if we might topple

into the gray streets. You wrote it in your

sprawling curlicues of graphite, words with

edges smooth like skin from

a dull pencil tip. My fingers graze

the drunk lines lightly, smudging your words that

whisper the way memories do.

The squib of my pen finds your words, slippery like

the surface of my photo paper, and makes permanent

what you made only

temporary. The wet ink looks slimy, it slithers over your

hissing S’s and rides the humps of your M’s,

pins your vowels into submission, pinned to the paper

for good. It is beautiful that my wrist rolls, now rests in

the same place yours once did as my pen

traces, traces the elusive gray

that writhes and meanders along the page, and

I wish we could hold hands as I caress your curves-

why do your letters sprawl with forces of repulsion

between your “w” and “e?”- and I see we

run out of space, you and I, on the paper,

and you have no more words. I lift my pen but

my wrist lingers, hungry for contact, resting on your

dangling words, dangling like we once did. A drop

of rich obsidian ink drips from the pen, a final

punctuation mark that leaves me unsatisfied.

Reviews

[...]

"smudging your words that
whisper the way memories do."

Wow. Ahhh, I would die if I wrote something as beautiful as this piece! And the ending is superb: "a final
punctuation mark that leaves me unsatisfied." !