Challenging Poetry

Rhyssa: her work

in a filing cabinet
in the corner of my room,
I keep me, on ink marked pages.

you are not your work,
they tell me,
you are the writer,

red ink doesn't touch you.
but my blood is ink, spilled into
story, and some words pour

from my heart without
breaking free. I bleed
with them.

I am more than words, but
when I am dust,
I will live only as my words.

Author's Note ▶︎

line count: 15
prompt: work

We tell young writers that they are not their work when it comes to critique. We cannot take the criticisms as indictments of us, our character, our talent. Instead, we need to treat our words as separate from us. But then we also tell people that the greatest writers live forever in their words. There's truth in both. They are not contradictory. But sometimes they feel that way.