Shownotes
A daily reading from One Poem Only—a quiet space for a single poem, read aloud.
Mastering the Pen
Ellie Augustin
I learned the weight of a pen
the way warriors learn steel
not in theory,
but in the quiet repetition
of showing up again.
By survival.
In my hand, it is not delicate.
It is trained.
It knows how to press into a sentence
and when to lift,
how to cut cleanly
without tearing the page.
I learned this among books.
Among shelves that hold
what others survived long enough to say.
Among spines that stand upright
after everything it took to write them.
This is where I am safest
inside ink,
inside margins that do not interrupt me,
inside pages that let me finish
without asking me to soften the truth.
A bookstore breathes with this permission.
The hush is not silence.
It is respect.
Every aisle is lined with proof:
each book once a private reckoning,
each chapter a decision to stay,
each author wielding the same instrument
until it obeyed.
I walk slowly here
because I am already among my own.
Because every title was once a hand
learning the same discipline I am still mastering.
And I dream
without spectacle
of the day my fingers stop tracing spines
and recognize themselves.
Not as victory.
As belonging.
That I learned the blade
inside these walls.
That I survived the writing.
That one day my book will stand here too
quiet, upright,
having earned its place
among endurance
bound in paper
and called literature.
More from Ellie Augustin ↓
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