This Life is a Draft

This life is a draft.

It is a work in progress

with scratches and ink stains all over.

Sometimes it is a tissue

covered in your salty tears

for days or weeks at a time.

It plays your ribs like a harp

and opens the most secret parts of you.

It is messy--

not the neat letter in an envelope

you sent to your future self as a kid.

By now, you hoped you’d be 

an astronaut or a firefighter 

or a princess.

Dreams started as seeds

grew faster than any tree

branched off every day in a new direction.

They wilt so easily with age.

Blossoming passions

take a fight

and every ounce of your fiery blood

to stay alive.

Your dream is a draft

you write and rewrite each day.

It’s hard to think the world is beautiful

when it’s made of paper and glass.

Everything fixed so precariously,

at a whisper or a nudge

pieces will shatter and rip.

Governments like houses of cards,

relationships like thread.

Things fall apart,

but they also come together.

And us: we have had our share

of brokenness,

we sat on the floor

piecing each other together

with Scotch tape and Elmer’s glue

knowing there is no permanent fix,

but grinning in the end

because we know no matter what,

we win.

So knead and mold the present clay--

There are no power tools

and no backspace keys.

Like the poem, we are never finished

we write and rewrite ourselves

and the product will always be a draft.