Never Mine to Write

Dripping comes the irony of sharpened ice,

as if the cold, once spoken,

could no longer pretend to be anything

but a shining cry.

I have swum through so many stories,

stroking shapes into water,

hoping they would float.

But each gesture dissolved,

a brief current, then collapse,

as though the world refused

the lines I tried to give it.

The snap of breaking lead

marks the soul’s revolt

against every self I carved.

Each becoming was already dying,

each likeness claiming its moment

then dispersing into something new.

“Lean back”, something whispers

from the slant of my own penmanship,

from letters that speak

like notches on a clock.

Let the current bear you home

into the tale you were born from.

Even the spine of the book

need not learn to read.

It only opens, again and again,

letting beginnings be entered,

life into life,

until meaning becomes the weight

we learn to carry forward.

Dripping

comes the irony

of sharpened ice.