Boxes

I've been writing so long, it makes me feel old.

. I have boxes and folders and notebooks and journals and piles of loose-leaf paper filled with poems, diary entries, barely-begun novels, ideas, theories, research....nothings. I began in middle school when my English teacher, Mrs. Garza, had the class write twenty poems and make them into a slam book of sorts.

At the time of each piece, I was feeling what I wrote. To me, it was the most profound write ever penned. But as I thumb through so many pages I get paper cuts but no boom. Heartbreakingly few of them seem worthy of sharing, and not a one reads immortal. It's a very humbling, discouraging reality, going through thousands upon thousands of poems and not only finding fault with all of them, but also seeing them for what they are: bitter bile spewed volatile in the moment, now only a sour stench on parchment.

I wanted to rip them all to shreds, burn each tiny piece and scatter the ashes in the wind, but a narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive part of me knows it is absolutely necessary to retain all documentation of every emotional fallout, every literary failure, every time I feel my life is worth chronicling.

Even if/when it's not.