Since I used to be a papermaker, I have dozens of blogs about paper in some form..from handmade washi lamps to toilet paper (not homemade.) This one, however, is the first poem in my new book of love poems, out within the month, I hope, and it is titled “Wallpaper.”

 

 

Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every time
it stops at you.

For Esther’s Writing Prompts, the prompt is “paper.”

When I searched 13 years of my blog  for the topic of “paper”  I came up with almost 400 blogs! As a writer and a papermaker, I guess that isn’t surprising.  I made the paper, starting out with tree bark that I soaked, pounded, then combined the fibers with formation aid suspended in water and dipped numerous times to make huge sheets of washi paper. I made some of my own forms for the lamps, to spread the paper over. Other larger forms were made by my husband and I devised shades for them out of my paper. Since we were both writers as well, paper formed an important influence in our lives. HERE  are some of our lamps.