How to Clear a Paper Jam - Megan Wildhood

One: stop hitting print. 

You already know your mom does not respond to feelings.

You know your dad blames you 

for destroying the sanctuary of his home with your young, big feelings.

Stop offering them material when 

they have shown you how reliably they will never read.

Two: stop hitting print.

Doing the same over and over

expecting different results is certainly practice.

But practice makes permanent.

It’s not the print button that’s broken. 

Three: find the jam yourself.

Your family will claim they don’t need to read 

anything even if they’ll acknowledge

that so many damn words have been long stuck.

Four: seriously, stop hitting print.

Your parents have never asked you 

how you’ve felt about anything.

Maybe they “didn’t have the skills.”

But they have always known how to read.

It’s intended, beautiful, that you are made of words.

Five: slowly pull out the paper.

It’s not about being all virtuous and patient.

It’s just that small fragments are impossible 

to dig out. And the ones from the last jam you

were in are likely what’s causing this one now.

Six: call support. Have a list ready of all you’ve tried: 

followed the directions, restarted and unplugged,

checked all the connections, updated drivers and the OS,

taken everything that comes apart apart.

Seven: stop trying to be the printer.

You cannot do both parts of any relationship.

You are not a machine like your mother (hoped).

Your dad should not have relied on quiet obedience 

from a child for peace in his home. You are not their machine.

Ink and gears and trays aren’t where words really come from, anyway.

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Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com.