Typewriting

My parents got me a typewriter for Christmas,
and I've been staring at it since.
I've been watching it grow pale in the wet window light,
slowly bleeding out, running dry of its ribbon-ink-blood.



If this was a story fit for books,
I would write about green eggs and ham and how scared I am.
I'd write about nights I've spent with my eyes closed tighter than a thousand fists. Closed tighter than the grip I've maintained on my delusions, and how the lack of circulation to the knuckles of my heart have made the fingers inside my chest turn white and stiff.
I'd whisper to you nervously about how my tongue feels like a treasure map pointing to a terrible secret improperly buried behind my fist-heart.
I'd tell you that I keep my heart in a fist. because I'm scared. to see the words my fingers would put together if I let them loose. and how I'm scared to see the black and white truth my hands could make for my fist-eyes - a ravenous beast of ink and tree that reels at the chance to swallow any inconclusivity I may yet reserve in it's conclusive and concrete claws of print and punctuation.

I would not, could not in a box.
I would not, could not with a fox..

But when I run out of treasure-map-talk,
these are only the musings of a heart in waiting.




Really, I let the keys beat out the last drops of permanence against innocent white so that I can do what's next (this is what really goes on inside and outside):



I sit down to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write words that no one will see but that I need to feel my fingers say. I need to see my fingers like ten little men on the moon, leaving prints in the unknown white.

So I typed an inkless letter to know what my fingers would feel like after fighting with my words. I wanted to wrestle with it all, right down to the literal process of pushing down those concave plastic circles, so that despite all of my work, I'd have nothing to say. That regardless of the hours I've spent behind those anxious keys, all I'm left with are white pages.

And the words im scared of what i cant see. were never so hard to write.

And I've never breathed such a permanent black and white sigh of relief (period).