Waiting for edits

My edits will arrive.

They will arrive yesterday or tomorrow or now. They will be just a rearrangement
of words and lines or great sweeping gouges that carve whole chapters away
leaving gaping holes that need to be replaced.

My chest is tight. I feel like perhaps my heart is giving up or giving out over the longest time.
Each night I die again. My edits cause a swelling
in the tissue, a drawing out where the blood thuds too hard.

I am waiting for my edits.

I am grinding my teeth at night.

I dream of children that I must save when I can not.
I dream of natural disasters coming to unnatural ends.

When my edits are done my book will be better or worse.
My book will be unchangeable
And I must embrace whatever wreck of myself I have left on the page.

I may die whilst I wait for my edits
Or perhaps they will come tomorrow, staving off this terrible loss of self
Beat by misshapen beat I come to an end
Of myself
or my waiting
or my book
or my career
or my self esteem.

And whatever half formed thing I make of it
It will never be so many other perfect things
And I will not be them
Or something outside of myself.

Tomorrow my edits may arrive

Or not.