I unscrew my fountain pen
a gift from a writer I
love—that deep ink kind of love
that can never be erased.
He tells me I need to remove
the cartridge before I board
the plane, tells me it will explode
if it remains locked in the pen,
like my heart sometimes feels
it’s going to explode so confined
in my chest. This scares me, you see
because I’m not sure how to replace
the cartridge without breaking
the pen and I don’t want to fuck
it up. I will try as hard as I can
to follow instructions and not
push too hard; I will try to un-
screw and re-screw and it should
all be fine. After all, it’s just a pen,
albeit a pen that when I hold it
in my hand it appears that my hand
is dancing the words right onto the page,
the words circling back into my heart,
my heart pounding to get out.