I have never identified with something

as well as I do the spiral notebook in your hands.

The words, I haven’t read them enough

to know them by heart, but I can see the letters

you erased when they were no longer right.

And I can see the phrases you crossed out

in haste because they never really worked.

Maybe it will take two hours, two weeks,

Or two years, but one day that wide-ruled

Sheet of paper with the perforated edge

Will wind up crumpled at the bottom

Of the bin, and I will never be the same.