“I’ve changed my font time and time again. And now it’s Ariel.” –Eileen Myles
You used to be newspaper. Linear and predictable. A few verb tense issues but barely any spelling errors.
When you were living near the mountains, you grew fond of a poet with windy hair and red, red lipstick. Her voice was smoky and intellectual. You started carrying around a dictionary to look up the words decorating her sentences. It’s like she spoke a different version of English, one with linen napkins and foie gras. You both shared a love for Bukowski and chai tea. She always had scrapes on her knees and her fingernails were chewed.
When you shared one of your poems with her, she said, “It’d be better in Garamond.”
When she left, you looked up this word because you’d never heard it before and you weren’t sure if it was a color or perhaps a type of sonnet.
Once, she let you kiss her because it was a Tuesday, or because it was raining and you let her use your umbrella or maybe because she like you. But probably because of the rain.
Her lips tasted of Henry Miller and peppermint.
You never told her that you started writing everything in Garamond, which you learned was not a color but a font. A shape of lines and curves. You never told her that you started to forget all about her red, red lips and instead, daydreamed about Garamond, named after a Frenchman. Spent your paychecks on ink for your printer to pronounce Garamond’s figure. You became monogamous with this font, unable to notice beauty outside of its letters and punctuation.
She started to notice. She started to notice that you stopped noticing her. She started to notice that your eyes no longer cared about the various shades of red bled into her lips and instead, just stared down. At your paper. And Garamond.
She had never been jealous of a font before; she wished she had never introduced you two.
You used to be newspaper. Black-and-white monotonous.
Now you are 16th century, Parisian engraved.
Aimee Herman 