Don't speak to me of pencils.What good have they done me...no,I mustn't say "they"...for in truth there was only the one.She was an Eberhardt/Faber #2.Modest,unassuming,lying in her box with her sisters among all the other stationary products in the High School bookstore.But I knew she was the one. I would tuck her away in my pencil-box,and we would go for mad spins through the countryside on my Raleigh 5-speed.Together,we would collapse laughing beneath some gnarled elm,where I would take her firmly in my grasp and together we would create the poems that are the only things I have left of her.Beautiful,sensitive things like
"The windmills of my mind turn slowly
Breezes of inspiration brush the ever-turning blades
Immune to onslaughts by the Don Quixotes of Conformity"
..and we would collapse,breathless and sated in that leafy bower.

For months,years I kept her by my side,safe in her little plastic box,taking her out only for those special spells of inspiration that would oft come upon me in those days,or perhaps to(gently)sharpen her.And though my love remained strong,my loyalty unquestionable,I was well aware that a grotesque change was coming over her.For...she was growing shorter.Slowly,inexorably,and even though I was completely meticulous in the sharpening process,I knew what was happening.She was turning into a stub.

I began to use her less,slipping a ball-point into her old spot in the pencil case,leaving her at home on the dresser,or on my desk at work.Until,one day, she was gone. Oh I searched for her. I looked in every coat pocket,under every bed,in darkened corners...in short,everywhere a pencil gone wrong might end up.Sleep eluded me.I even went to my physician for a prescription for sleeping pills.I watched in shock as he pulled my pencil from a desk drawer and scribbled incoherent babblings on his pad."No!"I shouted,"For God's sake don't abuse her in that way" and I seized him by the throat.As the pen toppled from his hand,I saw the Big Chief stamped on its side,and knew it was not her at all.

But that was many years ago.I now use only keyboards or cold mechanical pencils,and with the help of massive doses of St John's Wort,I have put her quietly in my memory.But sometimes,on a warm summer day,I drive past the old elm where we spent so many creative moments,and a tear comes to my eye.And just for a second, I seem to smell the thinnest aroma of graphite in the sun-laden air.