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 when she was slowly dying
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