Detained | Teen Ink

Detained

March 4, 2013
By nocontrol BRONZE, West Hartford, Connecticut
nocontrol BRONZE, West Hartford, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 5 comments

Favorite Quote:
"It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you, Hazel Grace." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars


Someone scratches his head and it seems to cause an itching epidemic.
Everywhere I turn, people are itching and scratching and tickling away at invisible creatures

I suddenly become extremely aware of the smell of my shampoo.
The one that smells like green tea but not the boring green tea;
The lemon flavored green tea.

I don’t know.
I never was much of a tea-drinker anyway.

The click of a pen;
The turn of a page.
A pretty girl furiously erases words from her paper.
I guess she made a mistake.

It’s funny how, if you write with a pencil, you can erase any blunder, any attempted thought, despite how grave the miscalculation may be.
But, when we use a pen,
Our mistakes stay.
Fallible human errors, scratched into paper for eternity,
Lying blissfully unaffected by whether or not we aspire to correct them.

Well, I made a mistake.
It was with a pen.

I wish I had been using a pencil.

I wish I could erase.


The author's comments:
Written whilst sitting in detention. Enjoy.

Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 2 comments.


on Mar. 14 2013 at 11:05 am
nocontrol BRONZE, West Hartford, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 5 comments

Favorite Quote:
"It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you, Hazel Grace." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

This was written by a friend of the poet...whilst logged in to her account!

on Mar. 14 2013 at 11:04 am
nocontrol BRONZE, West Hartford, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 5 comments

Favorite Quote:
"It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you, Hazel Grace." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I really like the way the poem opens...itching representing the insecurities of "invisible creatures," those things we scratch at but can never erase. I thought the "pretty girl/mistake" line was an effective understatement...a little critical, if chosen by the reader as such. The pencil/pen contrast was interesting...permanence and vulnerability of pen...those mistakes we can't erase.  I think there could be more connection between the eraser scratching away mistakes and the head scratching at the beginning. Do we have control over all our mistakes? Do we decide which things we write in lead or ink?