It is a slim thing. Not broad,
but thin. Stored far from the eraser,
it holds its place with honor.
It is shrouded in mystery,
looking up to the sky
and staring into the Milky Way.

It holds its prisoners in a very distinct way,
caressing them, but not too tight, while the broad
pages fall from the grasp of man, not towards the sky
but towards the ground, beaten and bruised by his eraser
and divided from every kind of mystery
that man could write about with honor.

But the paperclip retains its honor,
even if the pages cannot. It continues to hold in such a way
that it can glow with pride. Man is left in mystery,
wondering how the pages do not escape, but continuing to use it in broad
practices despite his ignorance. He writes too many words yet makes too many eraser
marks and has not enough real thought to even touch the edge of the sky.

But the paperclip, despite simple design, holds enough to reach this sky.
It holds the world in itself with honor,
while simultaneously holding nothing at all. The eraser
can relate. Yes, in its own way,
the eraser does hold the outcasts of the written society, any broad
topic that has been discarded, its contents a smudged mystery.

Yet it has nothing on the paperclip. Mysteri-
ously, the paperclip fights its own existence. It is bent out of shape, turned into a bird of the sky
or a fish of the sea while still expected to hold the broad
range of tastes and textures that are contained in a single piece of writing. Honor
is a thing of the past. It has gone away,
chasing the light remnants of what the eraser

stole. The eraser
is thrown into the drawer with the broken pencil and the injured pen, wondering what mystery
its life could have held if it had not been tossed out of man’s way
like an unused paperclip. But this is not about the eraser. This is not about the sky
that was taken away or a woman who was ripped from existence; no, this is about a creature of honor:
a paperclip. It is about this little thing, not too broad

but not too thin, broadening its horizons while containing them as the eraser
is left alone. It is about honoring the mystery
of the paperclip while the sun still shines in the sky, before man pushes that, as well, out of his way.