A daily reading from One Poem Only—a quiet space for a single poem, read aloud.

Mastering the Pen

Ellie Augustin

I learned the weight of a pen

the way warriors learn steel

not in theory,

but in the quiet repetition

of showing up again.

By survival.

In my hand, it is not delicate.

It is trained.

It knows how to press into a sentence

and when to lift,

how to cut cleanly

without tearing the page.

I learned this among books.

Among shelves that hold

what others survived long enough to say.

Among spines that stand upright

after everything it took to write them.

This is where I am safest

inside ink,

inside margins that do not interrupt me,

inside pages that let me finish

without asking me to soften the truth.

A bookstore breathes with this permission.

The hush is not silence.

It is respect.

Every aisle is lined with proof:

each book once a private reckoning,

each chapter a decision to stay,

each author wielding the same instrument

until it obeyed.

I walk slowly here

because I am already among my own.

Because every title was once a hand

learning the same discipline I am still mastering.

And I dream

without spectacle

of the day my fingers stop tracing spines

and recognize themselves.

Not as victory.

As belonging.

That I learned the blade

inside these walls.

That I survived the writing.

That one day my book will stand here too

quiet, upright,

having earned its place

among endurance

bound in paper

and called literature.

More from Ellie Augustin ↓

• Her blog, Lines Between Living
• @lines_between_living_now on Instagram
• @linesbtwnliving on Substack

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Poetry reminds us what matters. Thank you for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice. We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO