Is it the ash of burned thoughts

pressed into ink,

or the weightless flight of meaning

on the edge of a whisper?

Some call it rhythm,

the measured beat of syllables

marching in time,

but what of the silence

between heartbeats?

The breath caught in the throat,

the pause before the fall?

Others say it is truth—

raw, unflinching,

dragged from the depths of soul and sin.

But truth is a slippery thing,

a shadow that shifts

in the light of who we are,

who we wish we were.

Perhaps poetry is grief,

the kind that hums low in the chest,

or joy, sharp and fleeting,

like a shard of glass

held too tightly.

Perhaps it is love,

aching and unspoken,

or the scream that never leaves

the locked box of our ribs.

A poet is only as good

as the worlds they dare to see,

as the words they dare to break open

and bleed.

For poetry is not just written;

it is lived,

a shapeless thing,

both cage and key.