Poetry Friday: Sharpen Your Pencil

It's been a strange fall, rife with self-examination and self-exposure, and it's left me feeling raw and ragged and generally vulnerable—but also somehow stronger. Sometimes I wish I had better defenses, not just to keep the world out but to keep the tender parts of me in. But I know no other way to live, no other way to write the story of my life.

Without further ado, here's this week's happy skippy original poem...
 

Sharpen Your Pencil

Pick up a new pencil,
glossy yellow but useless,
graphite encased by cedar.

Into the sharpener press
the blunt end, and twist
against the razor within.

First goes the sunny veneer,
flaking to the table as gold
dust, unresisting. Easy.

Twist! The blade bites
into cedar, scraping a thin
curl. It falls with a whisper.

Twist! Slice deeper.
File the armor till sap
bleeds from the ragged splinters.

Twist! Claw up the wood,
layer by layer till there’s nothing
to protect the soft, gray core—

exposed, fragile, already
losing traces of itself
on every surface it touches.

A moment’s careless pressure,
and snap! A piece is lost
forever.

             But that’s the only way—
this whittling and wearing and breaking,
spiraling ever nearer to death.
There is no other way to write.
 

You'll find this week's Poetry Friday round-up at Author Amok!