Errata
A boy at school liked to collect the broken nibs
of pencils:
dozens of fractured graphite tines he kept inside
a secret
compartment in a carved wooden case. They rattled
in his bag
as he walked: a constant reminder of shoddy
penmanship,
of pressing too hard, holding his Staedtler HB
at the wrong
angle or clipping tips while gesticulating
at some fixed
point of interest, squinting while determining
the distance
of the earth from the sun, wetting his fingerprint
and tilting
it with a theatrical spin to gauge the course
of the wind.
I carry my accidents too. The scent of fresh
sharpenings
and the rattle of breakages, of stick against
bone, and word
against heart, follows in my wake. We are made of
these mistakes.
Ross Thompson is a writer and Arts Council award recipient from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His debut poetry collection Threading The Light is published by Dedalus Press. His work has appeared on television, radio, short films, and in a wide range of publications. Most recently, he wrote and curated A Silent War, a collaborative audio response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is currently preparing a second full-length book of poems.