She won’t find them in lightly dusted files:
how life lessons, hard taught, were pyrite,
and the intracted problems of existence fraught.
She may find a scrap,
the paper now rippled from break-up sobs,
in a shoe box with obsolete key fobs.
Somehow the brittling of this page,
with crossed-out phrasing,
the redrafting stage,
instills its words with intrigue still.
The archaeologist, enlivened –
with much to uncover – folds out the HP machine,
but the Inbox makes her ill.
Behold my craft, so furiously typed.
See how I put these fools to rights.
Gaze upon my collected works.
As if endlessly, I replied to all those jerks.
I fear,
although I struggled to be neat,
she’ll press Control and All Delete.
