The curved metal is perfect,

A soft and lonely green

The ribbon strong and rigid

So stamps don’t cut it free.

 

Did I have even an inkling,

As just a girl of thirteen,

What the hell it’d mean to me

To use this great machine?

 

I can recall it clearly

Like a lovers’ recollection

Of the place where they first meet,

It was the way that I felt

When I wrote my first story.

 

Maybe it was not fiction at all

But embellished diaries-

My fears and wishes and emotions

Set in my wildest fantasies.

 

I can remember my attitude then

And I look on it angrily

That I was so arrogant and believed

I controlled the words I was writing.

A pianist to her strings,

That was me and my machine,

And I was the one

The prodigy

That brought words into being.

 

But it’s the Writer that plays me.

And my fingers are the keys,

Pressing down until they bleed

Words of wisdom, sorrow, glee-

 

Who could ever be unhappy?

 

Oh the tears are only words now,

Puddles of ‘who’s and ‘what’s and ‘the’s

How’d it take so long to find out

It was the Story who made me?