The Ore
Before the “I” was cut and sewn,
a sound was given, not my own.
No child yet answers to a name,
I only cried, and crying, came.
Then came the cloth, a house, a creed,
a tongue to speak, a book to read.
They dressed the “I” in what they knew,
and what they knew, I answered to.
The cloth grew tight, I tore it thin
and struck out laughing, sail and grin.
A pirate flies what none have sewn
I dug for treasure of my own.
The tutorial closed, the sea became a field,
where losses kept their count and would not yield.
I tempered what I was as one tempers a sword,
and rose a knight, and swore, and served a lord.
Blow after blow, the plate took what it must,
and welded to the skin, and sealed in rust.
I stopped believing armor could come free,
the steel was not a thing I wore. The steel was me.
Then something soft came asking for the weight,
and wore the face of mercy at the gate.
It did not offer rest; it offered none,
it offered ending, dressed as being done.
Outside, a spider strung the rain again,
rebuilt the ruin, lost it, and began.
I watched, and could not do as spiders do,
to start from nothing, thread by thread, anew.
But armor is a shape, and shapes can fall,
the metal underneath outlasts them all.
So I unmade the knight and not the man,
and gave the fire back what the fire began.
So say goodbye, but say it to the sword,
the name, the cloth, the colors, not the word.
I gave myself before the armor came.
I stay. The shape is ash. The ore’s the same.