My Paper Heart

She’s a piece of paper intertwined with good intentions,
a sponge to soak up tears, a loyal holder of ink fantasies.
Blindingly white, the emptiness in her is blaring, flaring.
Caught up is she in dreams of all she wishes she could be,
an airplane to fly across the sea, a wadded ball hurled between you and me.
How astonishing, to become a rocket ship – over stars she’d trip!
-- a lone white in all the unnatural black of tonight.
Perhaps she could become a child’s work of art,
the start of another DiVinci, an artist, the smartest.
Idly she floats through her today and tomorrow, the wishes drowning her underlining sorrow.
And untouched is she, for she is no child of tattering winds or battered bends.
This is what brings her such trouble at her expected spin,
her whiteness a fog light to those just creeping out of sight. 
Then - fwoosh! – all is lost as she is violently tossed,
fleetingly fluttering through fingers,
- how she wishes their hold would linger! –
but then she flimsily clatters, and all of her hopes are shattered.
None of it matters.
Scattered is she, her wishes now thrown out into the depths of the darkest sea.
How can this be? And yet, behold!
A pencil with familiar fingers tickles her with the stories it tells.
Its lead is so bold, so cold, and her paper heart becomes crisp as the story begins to unfold.
Her today and tomorrow fills with the words flowing from those fingers that spill,
instill, stitch into seams of a brand new skill.
She feels alive, she thrives.
The words are sewn into her whiteness, and with it comes a heartbeat of her likeness.
And then, the phrases come to an end.
The fingers grow frustrated and begin to fidget,
and her heart and hope hesitate,
then dwindle to the smallest of digits.
The days drag, time lags, and her shoulders begin to sag.
No heartbeat sounds in her chest,
no movement from the pencil does away with this mess.
Perhaps this is a test to see if she is truly the best at holding the secret of the leaden progress.
She can... oh, how she plans!
And it is here she thinks she understands.
But before she could have sworn,
the fingers never pressed the sharpened lead into her core.
Her tears come in the form of ink blots,
and it is as if these spots had become clots in the word’s unraveling knot.
She is drowning in the pencil’s eraser shavings, cravings for the magic of yesterday never swaying.
The dents of the lead rips through her whiteness,
through her lightness, and it is then she is crumpled into tightness.
A crater is she, rocketing into the fireplace of immense degrees.
And the paper is soon enveloped in flame --
Oh, lovely, licking flame!
Its heat smolders her into ashes that fly
like doves to the ground,
the only remnants of the startling passion and the infused pain.