What can you do with some failures? Ground them into a fine paste then mash them together. These lines come from five (rightly) rejected poems.

Preservation

I have lost my coat. Like many coats that go on to be lost
it had a falling hem and several missing buttons.

No doubt we will make the same mistake.
Our pockets will tear our hands apart.

If only I could think, but that does not seem
to be the point either.

A woman smiles out of a long black coat,
the street wears a soft coat of fog.

They wear it for they wish others to know
they are here for the great air show.

The light is thinning the room’s hair.
Sorrow has brought them together.

The light coats a man waiting to cross
the road, coats his dog. Each of them recently

woke up from a dream and felt a voice
call from inside him. No one can trust
their own remembering.

A word may save us from saying the other thing.
Why put yourself through that, when you can say

something utterly else
and both of you know what it means? Beans.

I pull me into the long shadows
of my new sleeves.
I think my coat is keeping someone warm.

from Delphine Durand’s sketchbook