By Morgan Hannah, Life & Style Editor
My work is chopped up like a piece of raw meat.
I sent it in to the editor like a prized calf being shuttled off to a butcher.
I was unaware and naive to think that any good could come of it.
Like a grey rice strainer, my words and thoughts sift through—
they become lifeless and shapeless
and helpless and hapless, too.
Every time I relinquish control and send my words out into their care,
they butcher them, they beat them,
like meat on a cutting clock with no fat to spare.
I can’t look and I can’t think,
I only seethe and loathe.
Years’ worth of work that cannot be taken back home.
They have taken my words, my thoughts, and dumped them into the sink
they have scrubbed them clean of their meaning,
and I watch as it goes bleeding down the drain.
And into the gutter,
what’s left of my inspiration
what once was as smooth as golden butter.
When confronted about how they’ve stripped my work of its wonder,
I’m waiting on end, empty silence between emails—
I become lifeless and shapeless and helpless and hapless, my heart roaring like waves of thunder .
