Casualties of My Pounding Fingers

Posted on May 21, 2003 in Book of Days Possessions

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: It’s too soon to tell.

It’s too soon to tell if summer will cook me while I tap the keyboard, eroding holes through the letters with the acid of my fingers. My keyboard is a mess, particularly on the left side. The letter “e” has completely worn through. There’s a scar over d, a black gash like an eye lash hair fallen on the cheek. The a and the s keys also suffer, looking nearly as unhealthy as d. Of all the home keys, only j and ; remain readable.

These poor plastic blocks! As the sweat collects atop what has already been laid down, they lose their identity. Fortunately, I know each of them like I know a friend who has forgotten to wear her nametag at a convention. And I know that I can find the e-key in the same place that it always has been, waiting its contribution to my blogging. I honor “e” for its versatility, its ability to pull the freight of many sounds rendered on paper in the semaphore of handwriting. E breaks through to the spring because it is my most stalwart and used letter — I write no Gadsbys; this explains why there’s a tongue of plastic squashed into a larger hole. My heavy usage also explains why the d key has the gash and why the o key looks like an erasure on heavy paper. Poor e. Dead e. Maimed e. Poor all of them. They remind me, every one, of the “jigsaw woman” who I saw begging in Zagreb who every limb was slashed and repatched after a bomb had fallen on her. My keyboard endures the steady pounding of my fingers and for this reason, it looks like a war zone where the chief casualty is the alphabet.

---

Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about predictability.