Rough Drafts

Soon, no one will write like we did—
bareheaded, late, alone,
tapping out nothing,
trusting the next word to crawl in.

Already I am forgetting how it felt:
hating your mind
until something in it gave—
not a flash, but a flicker—
and a line with the weight of having
come through you.

This was not noble.
The words were mostly tired,
or smug,
or hurt.
They smelled of our desks.
We rewrote them
not to be better
but to find
what we’d meant
all along.

Who misses the ache? Only us,
and barely even us. 

Now it arrives clean.
Tidy. Efficient. The right register,
the expected point.

It does not pause
or plead
or feel ashamed of its first line.
And it is almost always
fine. 

There will be someone,
hundreds of years from now,
who wandering the archive,
will pause at a file:

“Draft 7, Untitled Essay.docx”

That slow-souled remnant
may squint at a phrase
left awkward
and feel—somewhere behind the eyes—
a soft, unsponsored tug. 

“What was it like,” they’ll ask,
“to believe that clarity came
from being unclear awhile?” 

Their peers will blink,
not understanding the question. 

And we—
who once mistook the blank page
for a mirror,
a god,
a parent withholding praise—
will become
the briefest nostalgia.

if [[ there’s a footnote on all this ]]; then

    it will be autogenerated,

else

    # even the silence

    # will have a summary.