Margin Notes

She edited his manuscript like she was undressing it — one careful correction at a time.

The manuscript landed on my desk at 4 p.m. on a Thursday, dog-eared and desperate. I could tell before I read a word — the pages were soft from handling, the margins crowded with crossed-out rewrites in increasingly frantic handwriting. Someone had poured themselves into this and then panicked about what they'd revealed.

I adjusted my glasses and began to read.

By page twelve, I'd stopped reaching for my red pen. By page thirty, I'd forgotten my coffee. The prose was raw — unpolished, sometimes clumsy — but underneath the rough edges was something rare: a voice that didn't flinch. He wrote about desire the way most people are afraid to even think about it.

I turned back to the cover page. The author's name was handwritten: *James Morrow. Draft 7.*

Seven drafts, and he still hadn't smoothed away the honesty. Good.

I picked up my pen and wrote in the margin of page one, in my smallest, most precise handwriting: *Don't lose this. Whatever you do in the next revision — don't lose this.*