after they made love
(instead of smoking a cigarette)
she would whisper sweet nothings about stationery
like how the average lead pencil could draw a line 35 miles long
he didn’t know whether to move to the next town
or write ‘I love you’ in pencil
25,000 times
About this poem
I like to use my pencils right down to the stub. One day I was contemplating the remains of the HB in my fingers and wondered how many words I’d written with it – I pictured that trail of lead as one continuous line. So I picked up the phone and rang the Staedtler company. To my amazement, they knew exactly how many words you can write with a traditional HB; as if people ring and ask this question every day. Thus, another poem was born.
About John Holton
John Holton is a freelance writer and editor, and the author of 10 publications, including the award-winning short story collections “Snowdropping” and “The Affairs of Men”. His most recent book is “Raining Embers – Bendigo’s Black Saturday Experience”. John writes feature articles for a range of newspapers and magazines and is currently putting the finishing touches to his first collection of poetry titled “The Little Book of Nowhere”.
