When to hit the return
on her Smith Corona ~
typed one font
had no delete
no warning sounds
carriage just stopped.
End of the line,
so she gave up.
Too much misspelled.
Angry eraser holes
at best, visible smudges.
Life on a page
ripped out in disgust,
crumpled beside tin ash tray,
empty pack nearby.
No sequel here.
Written for dVerse….in reply to the prompt about “temperature”.
This started from reading the line “I sat in bed in the morning writing poetry, hitting the return key whenever I wanted.” in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends. Went from that to the old days of typing on my very small, portable Smith Corona typewriter all through my college days….and somehow came out with this post. Go figure! Photo from pixabay.com
lillian the home poet 
Nice line: “Angry eraser holes”
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Thanks, Frank.
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Loved this Lillian. So many of the young whipper-snappers today have no idea how to relate to what the act of writing used to entail, and all the WhiteOut in the world could not really disguise the error, because the impression of the miscast letter still remained. There was a certain beauty in the act of typewriting. I think it stemmed from the care one needed to exercise in conducting the the act, because correcting errors was a frustration. Perhaps that brought reverence to the undertaking? Like I said, loved this Lillian!
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Thanks so much, Rob. Really appreciate your comment here. And oh yes….there was a definite paying attention…for me, there was always the writing longhand first, then the rereading and added words and arrows and cross outs etc. Only then did I go to the trusted Smith Corona because there was no way to create on it….because thoughts and words the first moment out of my head were never to be the final product and of course, the manual typewriter was to put down, hopefully, exact and final words.
In the poem…it’s a metaphor for the person who can’t take it anymore…and I do remember sometimes just ripping out the entire page in frustration!!!
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