A place to put a sentence

Sometimes I start a post because I’ve answered a question badly. Usually I haven’t said anything untrue. I’ve given the part of the answer I could arrange quickly enough, and later I keep thinking about what I left out.

Writing lets me go back. I can find the word that made the answer sound more certain than I meant it to, or separate two things I agreed to discuss as though they were the same. I can also discover that my first answer was adequate and I’ve spent a long time trying to make it impossible to misunderstand.

I don’t think that last task has an end.

This began as a place for poems. I still want it to be that, even as I put more ordinary sentences here. A poem gives me different decisions to make. Sometimes I want a line to remain open for a moment instead of explaining immediately where it is going.

I like being able to finish a thought before someone answers it. I also like returning to something I wrote and finding that another person recognized a small part of their own life there. I didn’t expect that when I started posting.

There are several unfinished things I could have worked on instead of this. Apparently I wanted to explain why I keep writing them.