The Forge
IDENTITYANGERRESILIENCY
The fire doesn’t burn
It consumes
It whispers in tongues I was never meant to hear
a furnace chant, a hunger older than I
I feed it steel
I feed it fury
I feed it every wound I carry like a secret
The metal screams in its throat, softens, bleeds light
I see myself in that glow
a thing unmade
a thing undone
The hammer rises
My arm is not mine anymore
it is a tool tied to muscle and will
Down it comes
The sound is not an echo, it is judgment
It shakes bone, rattles shadow
Each strike is a death sentence carried out on the weak
The body trembles, muscles tearing
lungs filled with smoke and silence
But the pain is nothing
a ghost gnawing at the edge of ritual
I swing again
because stopping would mean surrender
and surrender is a word that has no tongue here
This anvil is a sacrificial stone
Every blow is bloodletting
Every spark is a soul screaming for release
I am not shaping metal
I am dragging myself through fire
twisting into something the dark itself would fear
Not man
Not mercy
Only will, only the echo of hammer on steel
beating a new me out of ash and agony
Creation through violence
Transformation through force
The flame devours
the hammer shapes
and what crawls from the smoke is reborn
Made of rage
Made of ache
Made of iron that remembers every strike
The forge takes everything
In return…
It leaves me whole
It leaves me reshaped
It leaves me remade
It turns me steel sharpened into art
