Forged in Ash and Iron

Stillness is often mistaken for weakness. But there is a kind of quiet forged by generations of survival, resilience, and fierce remembering. This piece speaks for those whose calm was not given—it was earned, kept alive across storms that words could never name.

Scraping at the marrow of my silence,

mistaking stillness for surrender—

but my calm is an heirloom

handed down in ash and iron.

You thrash in the shallow waters

of your fury,

your names sharp and ugly in your mouth,

but they break against me like wind

against a mountain that remembers

the slow work of becoming.

I see you—

through the rage you cannot outgrow,

through the fear braided tight

into your voice.

And I do not move.

I hold the weight of names

older than your noise,

songs stitched into my blood

by hands that knew both suffering

and the secret art of survival.

You cannot box what was born unbound.

You cannot shame what has been weathered

in storms more brutal than your words.

I do not stand here for you.

I stand for them—

the ones who sang in fields and fought in silence,

whose victories were written in bone,

whose dignity is carved deep

into the root of my name.

I am the quiet bloodline.

And my stillness

is an inheritance

you will never understand.