Drawn
By Gordon Mei
July 30, 2007, age 21
I saw that drawing she drew,
The one in dark thick weathered pencil
Strokes porous like pumice,
Smeared graphite blurs from
Blackened erasers
Unable to reverse the deep engraved
Canyons carved by incompletely erased strokes,
Revealing how she almost,
Just almost,
Sketched that curve banking
A hair to the right.
They blend
With the imperfections in the paper surface
Atop the aging sepia
Creeping into every corner of the sheet,
Jostling my head to remind me
That this was an organic piece,
A piece conceived at one time
By a real, breathing person.
A person whose memory
Of ever having glided her hands
In controlled sweeps across this page
Has long withdrawn.
