I Write for the Marrow

I see it all... the little game, the quiet shuffle,

the way my words keep finding new costumes

and walking around under someone else’s name.

It would almost be flattering

if it wasn’t so obvious.

But I’ve learned something about people

who live on borrowed sparks:

they’re always starving,

always scavenging,

always reaching for flames

they can’t create themselves.

And still, they try.

They dress my lines up like fresh ideas,

twist my twilight into their backdrop,

call my metaphors their discoveries,

as if renaming a thing

changes where it was born.

But I know my voice.

I know the taste of my storms,

the edges of my fires,

and I can spot my fingerprints

long after someone else has smudged them.

I don’t need to scream technical words

to sound intelligent.

I don’t need a fortress of jargon

to prove my worth.

My intelligence lives in my reach, 

in the way my words move through people,

settle into their bones,

wake something old and sleeping inside them.

I write for the marrow,

for the veins,

for the pulse.

And if they have to dress my work up

just to make it “worthy,”

maybe that says more than I ever could.

It’s amusing, really..

watching the pieces of me

passed around like rare coins,

knowing they’ll never hold the currency

that built them.

By the time they dissect one line,

I’ve already burned through three new poems,

each one louder,

wilder,

and more untouchable than the last.

They are busy scavenging,

and I am busy creating.

We are not the same.

And yes,

I see the threads connecting everything.

Someone whispers my words forward,

little pieces of me handed off

like breadcrumbs in their quiet forest.

It’s fine.

It just tells me what I already know:

there are places inside me

that linger in the minds

trying hardest to forget them.

You don’t pass along poetry

that doesn’t haunt you a little.

So let them watch.

Let them borrow.

Let them pretend the echoes are theirs.

I won’t dim myself for it,

and I won’t stop creating

to make them comfortable.

I’ll keep moving like fire

while they’re still chasing the smoke,

thinking they’ve caught the heat

when they’ve only gathered

what I’ve already burned through.

I don’t compete.

I don’t need to.

I am the storm they’re still mapping,

the wildfire they can’t contain,

the origin they can’t duplicate.

And by the time they try,

I’ll already be somewhere new,

writing something they’ll never catch.