It’s fun to write with pens.
They dance across a page,
and I feel like I’m dancing with them.
But I used to be scared
to write in pen
because I never liked my first drafts.
Pen feels permanent,
and I don’t like my mistakes cemented
in ink.
I would write so precisely with pens,
thinking slowly about my words,
instead of letting ideas rush out of me.
Pen was for perfection.
I cried the first time I made a mistake
with pen
that I knew I’d see again and again –
an underline in my favorite book
that swiveled onto a word,
instead of staying straight.
Now I love pens for their finality.
Because mistakes are memories,
and I am made of mistakes
(even those that aren’t mistakes in the way I think).
My annotations are no longer perfect,
and the pen can do its job
of capturing a moment raw,
with no chance of changing for perfection.
I don’t like “perfect.”
Every time I smear a letter that
hasn’t fully dried,
I choose to see a shooting star.
And every time I cross out a word
to try again, leaving a reminder
of my mistakes – my humanness –
I can smile.
Because pen is more real,
more me.