Lost Pages

Sometimes I tear a page out so fast it rips twice. The trash bin beside the desk is full of half-confessions and almost-truths, curled in on themselves like dried leaves. I tell myself they’re gone, but my chest remembers every line I didn’t let live.

basket of white wounds

folded shut before they bled

leans against my chair

I kick it like it’s just trash

and wince like it’s still me

There are drafts that scare me because they go too far, and others that scare me because they don’t go anywhere at all. I call them “too much” or “not enough,” but what I really mean is: I’m not ready to stand beside this version of myself. So I close the file, and the words just pace the edges of my mind like a path that disappears into fog.

streetlight, window glass

my breath rises, writes, collapses

into itself again

I press my forehead to it

and call the ache “weather”

Some nights I worry I’m writing myself thinner with every revision. Sanding down the shake in my voice until it sounds calm, reasonable, harmless. Even what I delete doesn’t leave; it hangs in the air of the room like breath on cold glass, waiting for me to admit I still mean it.