Pencil

My drawing teacher said:Look,think,make a mark. Look, I told myself. And waited to be marked. Clouds are white but they darken with rain. Even a child blurs them back to little woolies on a hillside, little bundles without legs. Look, my teacher would surely tell me, they’re nothing like that.Like that: the lie.Like that: the poem. She said: Respond to the heaviest part of the figure first. Density is form. That I keep hearing destiny is not a mark of character. Like pilgrimage once morphed to mirage in a noisy room, someone so earnest at my ear. Then marriage slid. Mir-aage,Mir-aage, I heard the famous poet let loose awry into her microphone, triumphant. The figure to be drawn — not even half my age. She’s completely emptied her face for this job of standing still an hour. Look. Okay. But the little dream in there, inside the think that comes next. A pencil in my hand, its secret life is charcoal, the wood already burnt, a sacrifice.