hiding my reality behind a screen

did you know that

people can be identified

by their handwriting?

whole identities shaped by

a few hasty strokes of a pencil.

everything about you

contained in paper and pen.

on the internet,

my identity is hidden

by uniform typography.

anonymity is the cloak i use

to pretend that i am something more

than me.

on the internet,

my words can be

whatever i want them to be.

on paper, they are real,

and they are crude,

and i fear that

one day

they may come back and bite me.

when i close my computer screen

i always feel as though things cannot be seen

a childish notion, of course,

the one of privacy.

privacy doesn't exist,

especially not in websites and tv.

when i write in my notebook

things feel so much more real

like if i open the flimsy plastic cover

the pencil could peel off the page

and become a graphite monster.

like one day,

people will read my handwriting

and know me

better than i know myself.

or maybe,

i fear that someone will see this smeared pencil

and that

all they'll see is an unreadable mass

of blurred lines

between this world and mine.

i fear people will erase the words

i worked so hard to form

and i'm scared that pen and paper

aren't permanent enough to be meaningful.

so the only things i write on paper

are dark thoughts and ideas

crammed into notebooks

where i can either

use them later

or forget.