What the Eraser Leaves Behind

Six o'clock on a Friday, the last class just gone home. The room still smells of chalk and of twenty children's sweat, the ceiling fan turns slowly, motorbikes murmur out on the road. I have taught for almost thirty years, and the slowest thing I do all day is always the last: wiping the board. That day I finished, stepped back, and saw it.

End of the lesson,
I wipe the board once through.
The cloth goes left to right,
chalk dust lifts
and settles on my sleeve.

The words are gone.
But under the tube light
a pale smudge remains,
the shape of a sum
whose last step I forgot.

Tomorrow other words
will be written over it.
No one will be able to tell
which layer lies under which.

Ten years ago
there was a boy, too,
at the back desk,
copying something, then forgetting.
The board does not remember.
Only the smudge remains.

I set the cloth down.
Switch off the light.

The pale mark stays there until morning.

"Teacher, I forgot my pen."
A student has come back and stands in the doorway, still gripping a bag strap.
"You wiped it, but I can still see the writing."
"Yes. I see it too."

He took the pen and left. The slap of sandals faded down the corridor. I stood a while longer, chalk still on my hands, looking at a mark nobody had asked me to keep.

The poem explains nothing, so the prose will say one thing for it. What has been written and wiped away has not quite vanished. It becomes a faint mark, tomorrow's writing goes over it, and the mark stays underneath even though no one can read it. Some people find that a relief, some find it sad, and some feel both at once. I am in that last group. Impermanence at this small size does not take everything away, as this piece on impermanence and holding on too tightly says in its own way.

If you want to try, you do not need a board. You only need something that was wiped, washed, or cleared away today.

You will not know you did it right because the poem is good. You will know when you read it back and the lines look like what you actually saw, not like a piece of advice. The first time, my hand kept wanting to add a wise line at the end, something like "life is like a chalk mark." That line is tempting because it gives the poem a neat ending, but it closes the door exactly where the poem just opened one. Cut it, and let the last stanza stop on something done with the hands. After a week, some people notice their eyes pausing on small marks around the house, and some notice no difference. On a day that is too busy, write just two lines and describe only what you see.

If it will not come out, do not force it into a poem. Listing three things still visible is enough, with no line breaks. If writing it makes you feel sadder, put the pen down, drink a sip of water, and try again tomorrow with something lighter, like a cup in the kitchen rather than a message. An old cup has its own marks too, as in the piece about the chipped teacup. And if sadness or emptiness that comes with those marks lasts for many weeks, to the point where it is hard to eat, hard to sleep, hard to work, please talk with someone with professional training, such as a doctor or a counselor.

On Monday morning, I pick up the chalk again.