Prompt / Andoumboulou & Vorfruede
Drafting The End
A poem of poetic humanity
Can I be a rough draft after 66 years?
When am I enough?
Answer: never.
I am the fading words,
the dangling sentences,
the incomplete thought.
Is my life in the red folder or the yellow
or am I a footnote in the story of another?
Am I a work-in-progress or a blueprint
or the open question with no answer?
Am I the fact in yesterday’s diary or
the unknown in tomorrow’s?
I am not a poet major or a poet minor,
just one here, finding words where I thought
there were none, writing in the margins,
squeezing into tiny spaces of white.
I am not a story. I am a myth
and a herstory and a tale of many.
I am deep sorrow and empty longing,
I am fear I’ve never known and
love I have. I am the blood that
fills my veins and the brain that
negates it. I am MacDonalds
slaughtered in their sleep and
the grandmother great scalped in
a horse-drawn wagon looking for
hope that gurgled in her blood…
