Glue to the Scraps In Me - Exclusive The Never Was Poem + Audio

The Matchbook | 7.25.25

Technically, this is The Never Was #222

Poems are born in such strange ways, all of them unique. Some come effortlessly, rise to the surface of a soul like bubbles in champagne, some speak of sweetness as they pop. Some pull you under the dark waters within you, sink you like concrete boots, like whale fall to the bottom of the sea inside.

Some are born complete, finished, exactly as they are meant to be. Some are the opposite, some feel unfinished though you stop trying to end them. Some stay that way forever.

My upcoming book, The Never Was, is a tribute to all those that stay ‘unfinished’ and in doing so, feel more beautiful for it. It’s a tribute to the words that felt like they were born from who I am, from precisely what’s inside and always has been. It felt like it was born from observation, from noticing the world around me more, as the older I get the less I feel as though I need to hurry. They are poems made for the slowing, for the realization that we’ll die incomplete, and this is the way of things.

Today’s poem, another super sneak peek into the book that will be, is a poem that was born from a line, but then for some reason never felt ‘finished’ in the sense that most everything I write tends to feel to me.

The two quotations in this poem are actual ones, they are sentences I uttered out to Sarah on some random day, doing some random bit of the routines we’ve carved out and now call familiar, now call home. They are things that in my mind are already poems slowly forming, like the division of cells we saw animations of in biology class as kids, starting as one, then two, then four, then eight, then on and on until poetry is created. Something, from nothing.

Sometimes these lines become those poems, sometimes they are left, as these two were, “on the dark side of some quiet road inside.” I put them into this poem to show that, to show how many times I’m so heavy with words I struggle to stay upright, but then when I try to set them down, when I try to puzzle piece them together, they feel like shredded papers, and I’ve not enough tape.

There is a heaviness to this, a deep and abiding melancholy that comes when your mind creates so many words, so many lines, phrases, ideas, that you cannot possibly make something of them all. There is a death in this, a sense of waste.

But, but, if you’re lucky as I am, sometimes, we find someone who makes this ok, who turns our sorrowed chin away from that weight, and into the direct path of their grace.

She of newfound silver, always of grace, does this for me. She is the glue to all these scraps, and it keeps me alive. It keeps me sane. It keeps me writing. It keeps me here, with you, as I am now.

That’s what this is. I might be a Never Was, but she makes it not matter, and this little poem tries to show that.

I hope you enjoy it. I hope you’re as excited as I am for this new book. It’s something truly special, and I mean it. The way I see it is this: There are over 12,000 of you stunning souls here with me. If even half, hell if even 30% of you decided to buy it, maybe, maybe, we could crack the code and show the world that poetry still matters. That this kind of honesty does, too.

Here’s the audio version, for those who don’t abhor the sound of my voice reading these poems.

I love you all. Be good.

Every single pre-order is a chance to get this sucker to best-seller status. To show the world words like these matter, that POETRY matters. I’d love you to hold this in your hands. P.S. If you know any BookTok people, pleeeeeease get them to look at this hahaha.