Someone passed the mug of pencils down the table

Someone passed the mug of pencils down the table.

I took one.

Needed to cross out a line in my notes—

a number I'd written wrong, or not wrong,

but wrong for what they were saying now.

The eraser was worn flush to the metal.

I pressed it down anyway.

The ferrule dragged a scratch across the paper

and left a gray smear and a small tear

in the corner of the line I was trying to fix.

I turned the pencil over.

The word was still there. Just damaged.

I put my hand over it.

I took my hand away.

Put it back.

The meeting kept going.

Someone was asking a question.

I wrote the answer in the margin

with the same pencil,

and it came out fine—

the graphite sharp, the line clean.

The mistake sat there under my palm

for the rest of the meeting.

I looked at it a few times.

It didn't become anything.

It was just a mistake I couldn't fix

with the tools I had been given.