At some point in my day-to-day writing, it appears
I lost my cursive muscle.
My handwriting had morphed into
a poor man’s Comic Sans with my own
spin being little “connectors,”
a pretense to cursive, I suppose,
without any real effort to be actual cursive.

My shame was private
until now.

I’m in solitary cursive rehab,
and the results are painful.
To the eye, and to the memory
of my once effortless cursive.

Someone told me – and I hope this person
was wrong – that cursive is no longer
being taught in school.

At the risk of sounding creaky,
penmanship isn’t an old fashioned thing
to be discarded because we can text one another.

It’s a personal expression. To write a lovely letter
in distinctive handwriting is to honor the art of correspondence,
and, hopefully, the person with whom we’re corresponding.

And, where would the study of graphology be without
handwriting? What do I want my handwriting to say about me?
That I’m resilient, and, if I keep practicing, elegant in my scrawl.