This Writer's Process

It's here, the urge to compose

something that is mine, that feels

like mine. But how can I be sure

any of my thoughts have a strain—

a strained bit—of originality when I've

consumed so much media throughout

my life? Is the poem I want to write

about how nostalgia is like a species

of cordyceps to which I am susceptible

my own idea? This analogy where I am the infected insect

and my writing the spores spun out and away

from my fungus-stalk hands

feels too clever to be mine.

Even though Google assures me

my phrasing brings nothing to its

database mind, is that enough

to qualify originality, ownership?

I remember sitting on the floor

of my cousin's living room years ago,

when I was still a child and more

of the people I love were alive,

and looking at one of her old biology textbooks

only to see a photo of an ant with cordyceps

worming from its head. Is that

proof that this concept could have sprouted

from me? Or am I misremembering?

And if it is mine, am I not being arrogant

to think it—myself—clever, to consider pursuing it

and publishing it? If I was clever, surely I could

trust my mind. I don't. And, thus, my final draft: