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By Laurel Ahlfeld Date: 2003 Dec 07 Comment on this Work [[2003.12.07.02.22.6090]] |
| Tonight I'm feeling a little bit like that expensive pen you bought. The one from Borders that was twenty dollars for ink that glides across a page. It was a nice enough pen. Not the loveliest you'd ever seen, but you had a paycheck burning a whole in your pocket that day. So, the pen came home with you, and the burning in your trousers was quickly extinguished. At first, you used it passionately. Feverishly trying to jail every fleeting thought between the prison bars create by college ruled lines. They were, like me, glad to surrender themselves to your presence if it would mean they wouldn't be forgotten. Time wore on, and you found yourself with a problem. Nearly all the words had been captured so that when you wrote, the ink from one would dry before you could ever find another. Yet, you kept that pen close: an instrument to draw them out of hiding. You never knew when inspiration would come, so it was best to always be ready. With the pen kept snug in your pocket, far away from the hands that once allowed it to create, you waited and went about life until one day you'd forgotten what it was you were ever looking for. The pen became mixed with all the others at the bottom of its cloth pit (a thumbtack named Heidi, a pencil with broken lead named Elyse, a wilted flower named Lynn). Finally, the only promise- to not be forgotten- was pulled out and dropped tonight with some spare change while you purchased the only things you could ever commit to: your cigarettes and a lottery ticket. Yes, tonight I feel a little like that pen- convenient until it became a painful reminder of the things you couldn't be and eventually forgotten. |