At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
Then the glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punchclock.
Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open lawbook
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.
1993
Regular
Contemporary
2025
Childhood & Coming of Age
Education & Learning
Memory & The Past
Politics
Alliteration
the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession
Sensory Detail
words used to invoke the five senses (vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell)
Symbolism
a word, object, action, character, or concept that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance.