I don’t understand why Warby Parker is selling pencils, and I wish you were here with me in this alcove at the back of the store, surrounded by shelves of clear round tubs, each one home to different colored pencils with sayings like “Tracked Changes” and “Epiphany Scribbler.” I grab one of each and then I see the purple one that says, “Chapbook in Progress,” and I’m well aware that I’m having a disproportionate response to this fifty-cent pencil, but you were the one who said I should write a chapbook, you were the one to bear witness to my almost manic state this past year as ideas poured out of me to the point where I couldn’t sleep and I feared my brain would never stop, feared I couldn’t execute all my ideas or even use the pencils I already had at home let alone the ones I’m buying today, but there’s no way I’m leaving Warby Parker without this purple one, and all the pencils remind me of those hello-my-name-is-stickers which identify yourself to those around you, but more than that, these pencils say something about how we see ourselves. I am someone with a chapbook in progress because that’s how you saw me. Thanks to your encouragement, that’s how I now see myself and all of a sudden it makes sense to me why pencils are being sold in an eyeglass shop.
Debbie Feit is an accidental mental health advocate, unrelenting Jewish mother and author of The Parent’s Guide to Speech and Language Problems (McGraw-Hill) in addition to texts to her kids that go unanswered. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Abandon Journal, Five South, Passengers Journal and on her mother’s bulletin board. She is currently a reader for West Trade Review and formerly a person who used to be able to sleep without pharmaceutical intervention. Read about her husband’s inability to see crumbs on the kitchen counter on Instagram @debbiefeit or at debbiefeit.com.
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