Learning to Write
by Jim Tilley
—for DonnaLee
Her left hand grasps the fat, soft-leaded pencil
and makes broad strokes between the wide-ruled lines
that the tops and bottoms of characters
must barely touch, smooth cursive strokes,
straight and curved, double-size for capitals,
letter by letter through the alphabet,
a lifetime of experience telling her she has choices—
the modern-style, lower-case r she learned
in grade school or the old-fashioned one
with a serif on the leading edge and a gentle cusp
on the way down, the style to which she switched
in high school after reading a packet
of her grandmother’s letters. And the letter p
she could leave open at its base the way the Sisters
taught her, but now feels a need to close,
though doing so makes getting to the next letter
more difficult, having to retrace her path
before going on, taking steps backward more often
than she’d like. She’s as slow and awkward now
as she was then with everyone grading her progress.
Her script isn’t beautiful yet, not like the calligraphy
her right hand could form before the tremors.
But she discovered how beautiful she is
when her husband shaved her head after whole-brain
radiation took away her shoulder-length red hair.
She can see the smooth curves of her ears
and the diamond studs he gave her last birthday.
And now there’s a new slant to all her thank-you notes.
3 comments:
Wow, that's just beautiful....thankyou for sharing this DL xxx
Really touching. Thanks for sharing.
That last part about him shaving your head made me smile. Who would have expected there to be romance in this experience, but there it is, because you two have a beautiful love such as to find the romance in anything...
As I read it, I could easily picture it in my mind's eye, you and Doug making it something special, because that's how you are together.
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