Proof positive that I don't check my notes very often (not that I need to, there's only two entries). I just discovered that the author of the poem in this entry wrote me a note. He also apparently set up a diaryland account just to print the "real" version of his poem, and asked that I comment on it. I don't know what to say. How strange is it that he found me?
I clipped that poem out of a magazine years ago. I was in high school when I first read it. I can't even remember who printed it. I think it was CampusLife, a Christian magazine for highschoolers going to college (hopefully a Christian university). At the time, I was clipping articles and pictures out of various periodicals and hording them in a folder. One day in 2001, I was rifling through some old files and found the folder. The poem was in there, placed between a picture of Ethan Hawke and a picture of a goldfish bowl next to the ocean. Since I didn't have anything better to do, I decided to "paste" the poem in my diary.
Is the unedited version better or worse? I don't know. I'm a chemist. All I know is that both contain the reason I kept the poem in the first place, this line: Not the me I wish to become, and not the me I fear may emerge, but the me as I am today.
That's why I liked the poem. Not the me I wish to become, not the me I fear may emerge. Not the me I fear may emerge. That's why I couldn't, wouldn't be a book. Because of the me I fear may emerge.