This

When I feel exactly
this - and want this
to arrest itself
and last, and know
with some sort of
small but happy
certainty that
there will always
be this
to come back to -
I hope in some
small and scared
corner of whatever
it is that feels
this -
that you share
in the this
of mine and know
that to me
this is not some
small thing
even if it fits
in the dimple
of your
sideways smile.

I wonder if
this, sometimes,
was a mistake -
I wonder if I
had not grown
on this
and not fed
some corner
of me that
swelled and burst
with this -
if I would know
what this
even was.

This can fade,
it can wear itself
thin, and trickle
slowly away
but it will leave
in some small corner -
a feeble pulse,
a beat ready
to take this
and drum out
its thrum
and live
its music.

I sit and see before me
lines of literature marching
writers, authors, poets
brandishing skilled nibs and tips
and having it out with every last:
philosophy, sentiment and learning
and feel out-trumped, out-witted,
out-matched and out-tricked;
each word up my sleeve a redundancy
and each brilliance a mimicry
who am I to contest such giants,
their canons blasting holes
in my fragile verses
and surreptitious lines
and guilty poems
that, every bit mine,
have the stamp of amateur
trodden all over them.

If I may yet then
have something literary they do not,
then it is these lines,
in all humility:
If I am not great, and witty,
and deserving of praise,
then at least
I know also
that I am not
cocky;
literally.