GIZA

Beware, impetuous young authors: 

for writing is—

quite a bit less like freeing them 

than it is 

like—entombing  

those huge thoughts you're having

inside the solitary, 

cramped but enduring

pit of your memory. True,

you can always exhume

any words 

you've interred there,

but—you can never 

completely fill all the holes

left by those 

backspaces; 

you can never 

fully expect to undo—your having 

willfully planted

those now-arcane keys 

in the first place.

There, in stinging perpetuity 

they'll remain. The dilapidated

and half-hidden

ruins of a particular 

mortal life—that is no longer yours,

and maybe never was,

but now and 

forever always must 

continue to stand,

an emblazoned

monument to—almost 

having been.