Tips for Dead Ink

Why do you bite down so hard
On what you aren’t and won’t be?

All your scraps of notes and poems,
Thoughts you dropped off your sheer cliff

Of what is not and can’t be,
Of what you’ll be when you aren’t—

You are. You must not not be.
Tell us what it’s like to be,

Since we know you won’t tell us
What that’s like now you can’t be.