Left-Hand Margin

The letters have a drawer now.

I write them in pencil

because pencil feels like it's still deciding,

and I am still deciding,

and the left hand drags across each line

and lifts a ghost of the words with it —

gray, smeared, the heel of my palm

a record of whatever I pressed hardest on.

My kid asked why my hand was dirty.

I said it wasn't.

Then I held it up under the kitchen light

and the gray was there, definite.

Weeks of it.

Not dirty.

Evidence.

Of writing to people who are fine,

who don't need a letter,

who would find it strange to receive one.

I keep addressing them anyway,

in pencil,

in a hand that goes right through

its own record.