I wrote a good poem about you

I wrote a good poem about you
and erased it until the paper wore through;
until the eraser shredded and the desktop
was covered with granular pink shreds.
the visible debris of second thought
mixed among shreds of notebook paper.
the compound debris of what might have been written
about you and your longing brown eyes
and silky black hair and your dissatisfaction
with the things you'd written. I wrote
a noble poem that described you heroically,
a woman waiting for her real heart to be born
from her paper heart and her pencil heart
but erased it a half hour later, sore
from the writing of it; sore from thinking
about you too hard indeed; sore from
looking at paper and lines of graphite,
smears of graphite on loose leaf notebook paper,
memories of tests taken in school,
and of looking directly into your eyes
as though your eyes were all there were.
to look into in this life or the next.
I wrote a good poem about all of this
and regretted not only writing it,
but the memory of looking into your eyes
and kissing your lips and you softly
kissing mine too softly almost sadly,
as if you knew that none of it could be held
for very long; that what you'd written
would also have to be erased before long;
that what you'd done you had not really done
and that it could be deleted and begun anew
on a new day with a fresh sheet of notebook paper
and a newly sharpened pencil after
the sharpener had done its grinding;
after you had done all of your grinding
on a new morning when the paper was new,
your real heart still yet to be born.
I wrote a good poem about you
but where is it now I just want to know...