I should be five years younger- wait.
This poem shouldn’t be happening- no.

Let me start again.
There is a violence in creation
that I am unable to stave off.
My notebooks are mostly empty,
nearly perfect, marred only by the words
I’ve somehow managed to stammer out.

Speculative sculptor,
this forest of marble
will not wilt at your touch.
Breathing upon an unshaped
slab of stone will not cause it to crumble.

How can you possibly make strides
towards anything
if you’re unwilling to stumble along the way?