Red Pen

I saw his name in a box on the sidewalk,

scribbled in the margin of a used paperback.

That same looping 'M' that used to crawl

across my stanzas like a spider on a track.

He told the whole room that my heart was a cliché,

that the imagery was cheap and the meter was wrong.

I watched the red ink bleed into the yellow pad

until the words I loved didn't feel like they belonged.

I sat in the back with my throat feeling tight

and folded the paper until it was a small, white square.

He kept talking about Gatsby and the green light

while I tried to breathe in the dusty, dead air.

Ten years later and I still check my pulse

every time I try to write a line that feels true,

wondering if he’s still out there somewhere,

turning someone else’s sky into a shade of bruise.