if shame had a scent, it would be cedar and metal.
Here’s how it begins:
a brand-new pencil,
straight as intention,
breaks under the weight of your hand.
Second grade.
Long division.
You’ve barely learned
where to keep your elbows.
You could borrow another -
but in second grade
that’s a kind of death,
and you’ve already died once today,
splitting your pants at recess,
trying to out-somersault Kerry Reed,
the flexible boy everyone loves to watch fall and never bruise.
So you rise.
The sharpener waits on the far wall,
a small tribunal of metal and cedar.
You pass the faces -
Marissa, Freddie, Tina -
each a mirror tilted toward your undoing.
Someone giggles;
someone pretends not to see.
You keep walking.
The sharpener growls,
swallows the wood.
The air smells like forests that never forgive.
You crank too fast -
snap -
start again.
A small applause of silence behind you.
Years later,
a workbench, a draft,
your hand too heavy on the line.
The point breaks.
You catch your breath,
hear the whir of childhood -
the long aisle between desks,
the courage it took
to keep walking.
You realize
this was the first lesson:
everything breaks,
especially under pressure.
The rest of life
is learning what to do next -
to sharpen again,
to bear the sound,
to make something beautiful
with what still writes.
GBS
2011
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