Improv/Imitation 1, Week 3

"When we met, he was old",
a pencil shaving cut across his withered cheek
while the tips of red erasers whistle slowly.
Mitch Albom wrote about a green, scaly monster
in his own closet, but it hides more than he
creaks open the tiny door to look for clothes.
Fingertips and tips of fingernails tap tip-toes
across the flat part of my neck:
the meaning of the word "flatter," I believe.
Or is it "falter?"
I open my palm; there should be a fan between
my fingers so that mice would sing and knit
a dress while I whistle and bay at the sun.
He finds a book instead, littered with words
and marked for execution with a purple E on its chest,
the author's name scratched out with a green pen
and crushed beneath a new label:
HE WAS OLD.