I WRITE CHECKS

What do you write is a question someone interested or someone who wanted to challenge me might ask if we met on a bus or were out for a candle-lit dinner in a Lebanese restaurant with throaty percussive music set at just the right volume below our determined talk.   The main person who asks this question is myself.  Of myself.

I write checks.  Twice a month, and sometimes more if I'm not organized, I sit down and write checks.  I have a system, a special box where the bills stand upright, placed there as they come in the door, and where, in a dedicated drawer, there is always a pen, and another, where there are stamps.  My checkbooks are there too, either standing upright with the bills, or in the drawer with the pen.  

Pen and bills, check-books and stamps, these are my tools.  No-one asks What do you write but I have an avid audience, invested in my work.  They're there, they're listening, they're reading.  And if I don't write on cue, if perchance I miss an installment, I hear from them.  If I don't write they might just turn their back and cut me off.  Those huffy readers.

Ah poetry.  I no longer sign my books but I sign my checks.  I write in lightest pencil in my notebooks but when I write checks I always write with pen.  My readers wouldn't stand for it if I wrote in pencil.  They want to have the utmost confidence in me.  

They want more confidence in me than I have myself.