Imprints Poem by Sonny Rainshine

As her life became simpler,
skeletal, like a stripped-down car,
she began to crave minutiae—
the pollen on the flower, not the bloom,
the count of the cotton threads,
not the patterns and color of the fabric.

She became immersed in the handwriting
of long-forgotten historians,
oblivious to the upheavals
and cataclysms of the passage of time
unraveling on the page
like Rapunzel’s hair.

She imagined she could hear
the quiet squeak of the fountain pen
or the quill as if the paper
were resisting the scratching-on
of letters, words, phrases, that mimic
the grunts and breaths of speech.

One day, weary from
her daily dissections of detail,
she set out on a walk
to a nearby forest.
It was there
that the gnawing of caterpillars
and beetles on leaves
began to suggest the gnawing
of the pen on the paper,
the beat of her pulse
the rhythm of human speech.

Perhaps the closest we’ll get to immortality
is found in the scratches we’ve left
on the things we touch:
the chewed-on leaves of forest insects,
the hesitant black strokes on a blank
leaf of paper.