Being a Draft

 

It's not my conception

that I want to dwell on.

It's not even the becoming therefore being an idea born in my mother's mind before becoming welcomed into her womb.

It's the—I used to be a draft,

Something that's not even fully fledged raw & uncut, imperfect, A poem without line breaks& a jumble of grammar mistakes; a something that didn't know I was a someone—a someone who couldn't have pick two have come after a long line of greatness; greatness that after being revised grew to find their form & and how to fit into it:

Martin, a ballad;

George Carver, a free verse;

little Emmett, an elegy,

Maya Angelo, a guzzle—

then there's me they twinkle in my mother's eye born to be revised, chiseled down & to emerge as an ode, a remembrance of where I came from, a song of praise to those who were right there with me.

Knowing this,

I still—marvel in being a draft