Work In Progress

Free verse poem

Bind up the best parts of me
between tidy linen walls,
File me unobtrusively out of your way,
and call me forward only
when I have something of value to offer you.

My words—
Poetic
Pruned
Polished
Perfected
—can earn their keep.

But me?

I don’t dare ask you to make space for
all my unedited passages and
awkward syntax and
half-finished sentences and…

I don’t dare ask you to make space
for this four-hundred-page manuscript—
bleeding copy edits and covered in coffee rings—
dropped on your kitchen table with a resounding thump.

I don’t dare ask you to make space for this
dog-eared,
haphazard pile
of print and post-its
when I know that—sooner or later—
I’ll trip over my words and knock the whole stack
off the edge
     like a
          whitewater
               cascade,
and I don’t dare ask you to drop everything
to help me pick up the scattered pages
and put myself back in order.

And yet
And yet

I dare:

Could you really love me enough
to make space in your life
for a work in progress?