Copy Editing

 Danielle Walczak

for a good friend  

 

Laying down in the middle of the road at

3 a.m. is not always dangerous

but with you, it sometimes feels like it might be.

 

This won’t be everything about you, it can’t be.

 

You see it’s easy to write poems about nothing

but it’s hard to write poems about you.

 

You said, sometimes you feel like a caricature of yourself

but in a poem I try to discover your texture, architecture

structure of a soul shaped like a sculpture.

Carefully complex

words tattooed in a skin that’s not yours

inkjetted across a universe we’re not a part of

marked with the freckle behind your right ear,

when we match it’s always on Mondays.

 

You’re a binding stitched by needles

I have yet to bleed by.

 

This isn’t a competition but I hope you

realize it’s hard to the one who claps first.

If it’s a newspaper than why

does it feel like a book?