Lasting Thing
He holds me tightly, but he tells me that I am not meant to be a lasting thing. Half-constructed origami instructed to fly away from this place too soon, I am a crane without the defining wings or beak creased together. I am not really a crane at all, but printer paper crumpled and cast into the waste basket in trade for more colorful tree pulp.
My skin is a shame-torn notebook page inked with bad poetry and clichés without the sentiments of promise or presence penned in, performance without the permanence. Little people believing themselves to be artists or politicians or professors write their under-believed fantasies all over me and I am left this ever-lacking and never-complete scrawl.
I am not included in the pages. Why would I be? I am the paper. I was not meant to be a lasting thing.
Jacqueline Hyatt