Paper.
The thing we write our lives on.
It lives undeniably beneath us,
simply blank until we fill in the space
between the blue lines with…
something.

Whether it be a problem involving mathematics,
a note to that special girl, or boy,
a phone number that you really can’t afford to forget,
or just a silly poem,
paper gives us the gift of closure.
The gift to harness what’s in your noodle
and scribble it furiously down onto the stark parchment,
while your pencil stabs madly at the page,
trying vainly to impose the colossal contemplations
taking place behind your sweaty brow,
before they are shoved rudely out of the way by new ones.

There’s beauty, you see.
Oh but that’s not all.
What about the airplanes?
Yes, the aviation masterpieces that would make architects cringe,
which we carefully craft and then throw to armageddon.
Ah, the flight of the paper Luftwaffe is short-lived.
It blasts into the sky with a thousand dreams and expectations,
only to fall back to earth a few moments later,
burning and useless.
That paper never knew a pen.

Paper. It longs for us.
Perhaps to be bound in a book
and placed on a shelf for a long safe life,
or to play host to that important telephone number,
a short but well-regarded existence,
or even to entertain your physics paper,
In which case it equally craves to be marked neatly with a red A,
and placed under force of magnet to our refrigerator.
There, in your notebook, it lies.
Twisting,
Turning,
Burning,
Waiting.
Yearning.