I don’t know why, but I hate biros
with apologies to my mother

the one good thing that came out of my mother’s death
was that I was finally able
to throw her collection
of old biros
in the bin

she kept a mug full of the half-used wretches
on a corner shelf in the kitchen
and during her final few weeks of life
occasionally
I’d eye them up

just you wait
I’d whisper
just you wait

and thus
their cheap, plastic, ink-leaking, page-scratching, eminently disposable days were numbered