The Graphite Kiss

It feels like ages since I've held a real pencil
in my hands. I remember the rich
fibrous smell, the lovely and rough
texture of the finely sharpened wooden skin
that peels back to reveal a slender cone
of satiny, midnight fog. The velvet undercoat
that gives form like an ethereal and primordial
body, a shadowy skeleton, to my whimsical
and impossible meanderings. They would
later be strengthened by ink or type, but this
sinewy, sexy, gray creature lies here,
underscored by a vague sense of movement,
of future tenses. Both creator and destroyer,
this pencil is. One end ever ready to breath
life into word or image, the other ready at
a moment to sweep it away in a blaze
of rubbery friction. So peculiar, too, that
these polar entities seem intent on joining
each other again. Perhaps they are lovers,
separated by this smooth, yellowish, painted sea.
Alas, for as they near, so too the time of burial.
For once they become too intertwined I must
discard them, as my clumsy hand is too large.
My clumsy hand breaks these two hearts.

I'm sorry.