An Old Pen

The other pen made promises,
but could never be trusted,
always running out of ink
at the first sign of trouble.

It’s not you, I said,
it’s me.

Then I ran into a pen
I hadn’t seen in a while
down at the dollar store.
We’d spent some time together
long ago,
nothing serious,
just a few laughs
in an old notebook I used to own.

Still, I felt bad.
Look, I said,
you have to understand,
things were weird for me back then.
I was experimenting with graph paper
and I had a three Moleskine a week habit.

The pen just dangled there
against the pegboard.

Things are better now, I said,
I’ve stopped ripping out the pages,
a lot of my stuff is coherent.
I got a cat.

I reached out,
touched the plastic,
no resistance.

I took the pen home.
We started slow.
A little underlining,
a few phrases.

The ink felt good
against my page.

Next week,
if all goes well,
we’ll go downtown
and look for a new notebook,
one we can agree on.
Maybe something college ruled,
maybe no lines at all.

I don’t know.
We’ll see.

Tagged as: Poems