I shoulda, woulda, coulda asked for slate and chalk, but encouragement breeds cockiness, and now I am left staring at a paper marred with several holes.
Intelligent enough at least to use a pencil with eraser that grants forgiveness to a growing lack of confidence and indecision. Darker, darker, over and over, erasing and replacing lines and words to cover smudges left by errors made; a clean sheet can only take so much. Eyes are black and heavy around a hole that saw too much and yet even with the seeing, never quite looked right. Words that sounded good the first time but left a soul open to interpretation when I wanted to be clear—but why?
I drew bunny rabbit questions that merely met more rabbits to proliferate until there were no burrows empty left to hide in and they must of necessity fall off the page; lost to all but puzzled memory that cannot close the file and seeks them still with useless grabbing at the breeze that trails behind them.
“Do not go gently into that good night,” he said, “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” But it is time, I think, to crumple paper words into a wadded ball that may at least serve as a toy to toss around a little while. And move along to second grade without reluctance or regret but with memory I would hope, to ask for slate and chalk instead.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology