The Staple

Staples

Unlike the colorful and delicate paper clip, which calls for poetry, the brutal masculinity of the staple is best described in prose.

While the delicate paper clip’s purpose is to gently hold papers together, it does so in the interest of the owner, available to removal and replacement.

Made only in gunmetal silver, the job of the staple--as the staple envisions it--is to brutally stab the papers to which it is affixed, and to stay there into eternity. Staples are lined up in their original box in militaristic rows, each to follow the one before it as the owner wishes.

Occasionally, the owner craps it up, and the staple strikes the paper at an angle that mutilates its body, and it is replaced by the staple next in line. And sometimes the two staples are left that way—side by side, with the mutilated staple further humiliated by the perfection of the staple next to which it lies.

Brutality may be the profession of the staple, but nothing can compare to the thoughtless lack of sympathy of a human being.

ARW
6/20/10