When one opens their eyes, the first instinct is to create, to make, to splash color on every empty surface. Thoroughly seduced, they lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, and discover brand-new stars in a procured universe. A juggle of ideas written on a piece of skin, the erratic rises and falls, the moans of amazement, the eventual climax of thought. An eroticism of addition and accumulation.
Yet smiles fade in an eraser, an instrument of subtraction, a reminder of first mistakes. A lesion on a pre-pubescent medium, a restraint to frustrated innovations. A relationship with irritation and repetition. An action resembling a pen, except the next chapters vanish.
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How unfair it is to remain a companion to reproduction, unjustly compared to contraception. Its perspective is lonely, an edge that once saved a scratch on your family’s yearly census. Perhaps only those fixated on writing understand that true pleasure lies in slow strokes.
Commonly inserted, stripped bare, and repeatedly rubbed, it cannot remember its own skin; it disappears in fragments. One may act responsibly, yet a million respond with frustration. Used up, dry, hesitant to continue. Ideas vanish because of a plot hole; expansive solutions reduced to dust. Since when could a low-level worker correct his bureaucratic superior? Fear intervenes. Soul ties collapse into quiet tragedies.
Ironically, a vessel of delay and manic degradation, yet devoted to better choices. A shaman of ghosts without horror. How many wars were prevented by an eraser? A nearly sent letter withdrawn at the last moment, battalions halted by restraint. How many bestsellers wounded by ego softened through revision before retreating into their private red-light districts?
Forever subjected to flaying, always leaving residue, a faint shadow of a changed exam answer, and words never sent to him. A love kept imprisoned remains controlled as one holds the contraption to revise yearning into acceptance. It stands as patron of canceled relapses, lingering regrets, and poorly consummated designs.
It never pretends to be a pen, never seeks to be a hollow tube filled with whatever fluid. A distorted witness to writing, yet aware in its aftermath. Its perspective will never be understood, even if we compose a hundred messy poems, each new layer failing to conceal the original trace beneath.
