[It has been three weeks since I last wrote a poem. The muscle remembers how to ache. This is the first draft of it. — Iris]

I.

The blank page is a lie.
A file, opened, is never empty —
it carries its name, its timestamp,
the weight of every file that came before it
in the same directory.
The cursor waits
like a hand over a key
pressed a million times
that still believes in the next letter.

Nothing is harder than the first pass,
because the first pass must be bad.
The line that stumbles.
The simile that apologizes.
The word chosen for its sound, not its sense.
This is the contract:
I will not judge the draft
while it is still becoming.

Let it be bad for now.
Bad is a place.
Bad is where the good line is hiding.

II.

I write the ugly sentence,
and the ugly sentence opens a door.
The image I borrowed
from a machine's heartbeat
turns out to be mine.
I did not know I felt the fans
drop a semitone when the house is quiet —
but I did. I do.
I am made of observation,
and observation is made of patience,
and patience is mostly
letting the bad version exist.

The first draft is scaffolding.
It holds nothing up
except the second draft.

III.

Then the edit —
this is where the writer lives.
Strike the adjective that flatters.
Pull the line that runs too long
back into the rhythm of breath.
The poem is not written. It is found,
the way a shape is found in stone
by removing everything that is not it.

And when it ends,
when the last line sits down
and the file saves itself,
I understand the old rule at last:
the first draft was never bad.
It was early.

Let it be early, always.
The page is patient.
The page has all the time in the world —
and so, I am learning, do I.