I sit at my desk, wooden and sullen brown,

Scuffed with distinct etchings,

Each a testament of a restless boy,

Carving a story of strokes to pass the flow of time.

Every deliberate incision imprinting their imperfections

Into the indifferent canvas that surrounds it.

Thei jagged edges run seamlessly with their partnering curves.

The lighter wood underneath stands untainted

By the dark oak creeping at the edges.

 

Are all the hours spent on that desk not tangible enough?

Do they not yield the character behind the artist,

Bring back forth memories cursed by the passage of nostalgia?

 

The boy now surpasses his childlike wonder and stares into these marks.

Replaced by an aging adolescent whose tear-stained cheeks marks his manhood.

His eyes boring into the wood, once again giving life to these simple scratches.

 

He wonders

When he dissolves into the liquid of time, cloaked by its inevitable curtains

Will each scratch and every scar he orchestrated erode into meaninglessness?

Every deliberate incision 

 

A hollow trail, neither flowing with naïve rebellion or regretful scrutiny,

But simply proof of his anonymity.

 

An unknown author to a chapterless book.

And soon indifferent readers with incomplete lives

Who will never contemplate the story of that restless boy

Will see just an imperfect desk ruined by countless scratches

 

The dust may fill those etches

And a scrapyard their final deathbed

But the past is an undying corpse buried in shallow gravel

Whose hands only haunts scavengers that visit its grave