Poem inspired by “The Genesis of a Passion”
I did not see it coming, just a flicker in the storm. .
But something in that quiet ache began to change my form. .
.
I walked with borrowed reasons, secondhand and neatly filed. .
Yet one small wound refused to heal, and that is where it riled. .
.
It pressed against my ribcage like a question said in prayer. .
A restless, low insistence: “There is something growing there.” .
.
I tried to drown it in the noise of clever books and plans. .
But still it burned behind my eyes and trembled in my hands. .
.
Some nights I traced the fault lines of the life I might have led. .
And found a hidden pathway running backward through my dread. .
.
Was it that first betrayal, or the silence at the table? .
Or seeing someone shattered who was told they should be able? .
.
Perhaps it was a kindness that arrived when I was broken. .
A stranger’s steady presence like a living, wordless token. .
.
Whatever its first ember, I could never name the start. .
I only know it tightened like a vow around my heart. .
.
It taught me how our suffering can rip the seams of sleep. .
Until we turn and face the place where memories cut deep. .
.
There, in the dim anatomy of what we’ve learned to hide. .
A quiet fire assembles from the ruins we survived. .
.
I found myself defending those who shook the way I shook. .
As if my chest became a door instead of just a book. .
.
My questions grew more tender, less obsessed with being right. .
I wanted more to stay with you than win another fight. .
.
This passion was not glamour, not a spotlight’s hungry beam. .
It was a long apprenticeship to one unfinished theme. .
.
The theme that every human life is more than what was done. .
And no one should be measured by the damage when they’re young. .
.
So I began to listen to the faulted and the frail. .
To stories that the polished world preferred to call a fail. .
.
I saw my own reflection in the shiver of their voice. .
And realized that loving them was also my own choice. .
.
Yet choice and calling tangled like two rivers in a flood. .
I followed where it pulled me through the silt of grief and blood. .
.
It cost me easy comfort, simple answers, shallow peace. .
But in that costly territory, something found release. .
.
I watched my guarded certainties collapse into the sea. .
And from the shards a gentler, braver self looked back at me. .
.
To carry such a passion is to walk with open scars. .
To let your past illuminate, not just predict, who you are. .
.
It asks you not to worship it, nor chain yourself in pain. .
But use the hurt you once endured to shelter others’ rain. .
.
Now when I feel that trembling where the earliest echoes live. .
I hold it like a lantern that was always meant to give. .
.
I think of how your own life hides a seed you barely see. .
Some moment that still follows you, still shaping who you’ll be. .
.
Maybe it was a heartbreak, or a teacher’s single word. .
A book that found you wandering, a melody you heard. .
.
You do not have to solve it, draw a diagram of why. .
Just notice how it moves you when another’s eyes are dry. .
.
For passion’s first genealogy is written in your chest. .
In every time you could have left and yet you did your best. .
.
So ask yourself, in mercy, what first taught your soul to burn. .
And let that hidden genesis become the way you turn. .
.
Perhaps tonight in thinking of the origins you’ve known. .
You’ll find the tender starting point of what you call your own. .
.
And in that soft admission, like a long-forgotten dawn. .
You’ll see the quiet passion that has led you all along. .
…
DCG
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