I drew the original plans with considerable ambition —
the life of a man who was going to inhabit his potential fully,
who was going to become the definite edition
of himself he could already see, unruly
with its own specificity, its own insistent clarity
about what it was and where it was going.
The blueprint is still under the building.
I’ve gone back sometimes, to the original coordinates —
the claims I staked before the reasonable accommodations
started, before the gradual, collaborative
revision of expectation, the calibrations
a man makes when the prospectus turns provisional.
[Chorus]
The blueprint under the building —
the prospectus no one funded, the life held in abeyance,
the ambition I kept deferring, the rebuilding
I’ve been meaning to begin, the dormant inheritance
of everything I was going to construct.
I can still read the original handwriting.
I know what I was before I became
the present draft — more precise, more inhabiting
of the thing I was moving toward, less complicit
in the drift away from it.
The foundation’s solid. The original lines
are still there under the paint, under the years,
under the compromises and the resigned designs
that got built on top — not foreclosed, not past repair —
just waiting on the demolition.
[Chorus]
The blueprint under the building —
the prospectus no one funded, the life held in abeyance,
the ambition I kept deferring, the rebuilding
I’ve been meaning to begin, the dormant inheritance
of everything I was going to construct.