It's easy to take back words
That someone has yet to read
When you put them down on
Pixelated screens rather than on paper.

Paper keeps the marks, absorbs them
And no matter the eraser kisses
They remain, shadowed, a palimpsest, waiting
Betraying you if anyone really looks.  

The backspace button, though, my friend
Snuffs out incriminating words, murders them,
And I envy such simple magic,
Despairing it cannot delete my mind.

It fails me, the weight remaining
Ill balanced, to sprawl across vertebrae,
In the hollows of my collarbones,
Beneath my tongue, behind my teeth.

All the things I cannot say,
Not in my own gray matter,
Not allowed in voice or print,
That flèche gauche waits, ever hungry.