Gel pens are awful.

Rollerballs, fountain pens, this-cost-me-more-than-50-cents pens.

These pens are the kind that make me raise my expectations
for the words they might scrawl out.

Blueberry inks leave me with less than the empty sentences they sculpt.
The perfect clean line that connects capricious content.

I think of the things I might write and their respectful mediums.
Certainly not rollerballs. Nor charcoal ink, nor Crayola, nor colors.
Yet these words aren’t so subject to the less dignified wand of a pencil.
Leaden graphite, so subject to change, so easily corrected.

I think I may hate pencils just the same.

Maybe my words are worthy of more, but nothing much,
so I write my messy thoughts in blood.