photo by Jenn

 

 

DIXON TICONDEROGA #2

Oh, the simple pleasure of writing with a newly

sharpened pencil.  The particular smell of my
fifth-grade classroom.  Woody, deep metallic. 

About every month for the last thirty-three years

I break out in a cold sweat, remembering that smell.   
And the broken pencil tip lodged under pale skin in
my right thigh.  Still visible.  A lead time bomb.
Will it kill me some day? 

1983.  Daydreaming about the raven-haired girl

in the desk in front of me.  She lived in a tin shanty
in Juarez, crossing the border every day with her
mother.  A pencil between my legs, clenched with
both fists.  Nervous knees banging together, piercing
skin, the sharp tip.  Breaking off.    

Where it remains to remind me to wonder if she made

it out of that place alive.  Where it will remain long
after bones.  A spec of immortality.