I am a proofread, amended manuscript.

An altered
copy of the undesirable original

where history was unnecessarily edited:

Delete this. Add that.

I was broken down into parts,

each line, each word, each letter

declared this blue-eyed literary
initiative all wrong.

The authors claimed I was filled with
mistakes:

disconnected, superfluous,
unstructured,

fragmented.

Each page was rewritten

until I was nothing but

a collection of multiple revisions,

decidedly unfit for publication.

But authors don’t write stories.

Stories write stories.

I am my own story,

my own unfinished truth,

my own work in progress,

my own creative effort.

And in the beauty of our revisions is
where our story will be told.