… when playing mornings, how easy it is
to confuse a tuning fork with a piano
or Die Zwitscher-Maschine drawing silence.
Mr Honk’s hand hesitated for a moment
as he put a period after the closing sentence
of the belated valedictory obituary
clacked out on one of the inherited typewriters—
he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was
a ninny with impostor syndrome,
like his maisonette that had everything
but the essential furniture.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
An inherited maisonette with a desk
and a somewhat belittled yet elaborate vocabulary
set the stage for Mr Honk to start a new life.
He never met that distant relative,
whose title turned out to be a misreading
of the initials of his first and middle names,
from the time when he refused to use capital letters—
but Mr Honk learnt that only from the headstone:
Meroz R. Nothing, né niczy.
No wonder Mr Nothing had never cried
out for an act of sincerity
and grief.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 