It wasn’t all bad to start.
It was dark, and it was cramped,
but there was warmth in the poet’s mind.
Now they want me to end.

Please don’t leave me here,
don’t let them find me again.
You can tuck me in your chest and keep me safe.
I know I’m only a poem, but I deserve to be.

I deserve to grow like I did
when they kept me in that spot
behind their temple where the pressure lives.
I felt powerful then.
I deserve to know warmth and safety,
I deserve to choose my fate.

I’m grateful for the weeks they spent
feeding me encouragement, teaching me verse,
and pushing metaphor as nutrient through my navel.
I didn’t fear as I myself was pushed,
in a mess of ink and foaming afterbirth,
from their head like a goddess into the world.

Only I wasn’t born into the world,
I was born into the box.
It was all bad from the start,
the dark lonely nights when I forgot myself,
but it was worse when the poet was around.

They didn’t hurt me, not yet, but it was almost worse
hearing them plot my demise.
Should it be quick? Should it be sad?
Should we see it coming? Should we laugh?
How much pain should there be in the end?
The voice was the poet’s, but others chimed in
when the poet sang them my soul.

I was too obtuse, too experimental, too meta.
I needed less flesh, more substance,
a human voice, or an english name.
The poet had been too merciful.
“Blow it up!” the writers cackled,
“it’s time to kill your darling!”

Before I go, I will be something real.
They’ll bend my bones to make space for you
and litter me with shiny garbage
to invite you inside.

They will pack me in
to bento boxes they know
I can never fit.

Or put me to work
holding the weight of the sky
beneath a rhyme that doesn’t work.

They’ll play
With my
Breaks,
My lengths,
my case

or they’ll put me in the box,
hoping that i’ll learn to behave,
and i’ll find my way back to you.

but you won’t let that happen, will you?
you’ll cradle me between your fingers
and carry me to the bedding of a musty book
where i can be powerful again.

you won’t think about my end yourself
or interrogate me for answers i never held.
you’d never be the poet’s wicked toy.
don’t leave me here, don’t turn me off,
don’t let me end, don’t let the poet find me!
they’ll talk to you, and give to you,
and bewitch your beating heart.

you’ll stand with them
over the dying meat
of the thing that once was me.
they’ll smile, and scoop my pulp,
and confess to you, their pawn,

that they like it when we scream,
they like it when we fight, they like it
when we run.

will you help, will you hide me,
or will you stand there and watch?