when people ask...

When people ask what I am

I like to say I am a writer

Not because I understand plot

Or because I make the most realistic characters

Because I don’t

When people ask

I like to say I am a writer

Because poets breathe air back and forth

between earth and the heavens

inspiration filling their lungs

and making its way through their veins

and sometimes it feels like my breath

doesn’t even reach the stratosphere

like its left somewhere in the clouds

wondering where it all went wrong

when people ask

I say I am a writer

Because poets break spines with words

And I

I tug at heart strings

When people ask

I say I am a ghost

Because popularity never looked my way

Because I was never talented enough

to draw a crowd

Because I was never more

Because I was never a poet

When people ask

I like to say

That writing was etched into my every cell

That writing flows through my veins

like ink mixing with blood

When people ask

I say

That maybe it’s not poetry

Because maybe

it’s just my heart

When people ask

I say it’s ok

I always liked the view from the clouds anyways

When people ask what I am

I like to say I am a writer

Because I can’t imagine anything nobler

Because even if

 the angels and I never shared oxygen

I was born to be a writer

Born to be irrational

Born to be a spectator

But sometimes I swear

My voice makes it to the stratosphere

And that is something worth mention