Half-Done Grid

Unfolded the paper, weeks old, coffee-stained,

and there it was, my effort, restrained

by what I didn't know, or simply quit.

Messy pencil scrawl, a little bit

of me in the squares.

'Seven down, a type of bird,' I'd written 'LARK'

before I stopped, left it in the dark

of the forgotten pile. The ink was faded,

the intention, jaded.

So many blank spaces still, a grid

of things I never found, or hid

from myself. The clue for 'Eight Across'

still waiting, for my mind to cross

that bridge it never did.