They feel foreign beneath my fingers: smooth and hard. The cool indentations cradle my fingertips. And I pause a few moments before before pushing downward.
But I don’t press hard enough, and the lever barely lifts. Falls quickly backward in failure.
The next press is sheer violence. The lever whips upward with vicious ferocity, and the type hammer strikes the ribbon with brute force: the blood of it left in the lines of the “t” now scarred onto the face of the white page.
Many letters followed, heartbeat racing with the staccato smack of hard metal against the soft surface. Pounding the words into the paper.
barbara fletcher 