Phyllis Mannan

Paper

Anne Frank said, “Paper has more patience
than people.” Her voice, so alive
in her diary, was one the Nazis couldn’t silence.
This morning I wrote on white notebook paper
with lines like unimpeded roads—my scribbles
thin guy wires connecting me to myself.
Before computers, carbon made ghosts
of my poems and essays, my thoughts pressed
into gossamer onion skin. When I gaze
at the flimsy sheets now, it’s as though
they come from another self.
Paper, my long-suffering friend, I love
your placid face. Where else
could I ask questions no one can answer:
Why does my adult son, locked
in autism, not know how old he is? Why
does he stride away, talking to himself
without saying goodbye?

A former high school English teacher, Phyllis Mannan lives with her husband and daughter in
Manzanita, on the North Oregon Coast. She has received a Literary Arts Fellowship in Poetry
and has published a poetry chapbook, Bitterbrush (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have
appeared in Cloudbank, The Oregonian, Rain Magazine, Verseweavers: The Oregon
Poetry Association Anthology of Prize-winning Poems, and elsewhere.