📝 The Echo in the Well
Photo by Valentin Lacoste on Unsplash
📝 The Echo in the Well
We walked the same path, pen in hand,
Mind alight, a shared commitment's sign.
Pilgrims in a lonely, distant land,
Chasing the same bright star, divine.
Our bond, once firm, was forged by toil,
Ink-smudged paper, the screen's harsh glow,
A hopeful process on a hungry soil,
A private weight the outside doesn't know.
But when the harvest comes, a sudden wrench,
The seed you sow brings fruit upon my ground.
The garden blooms, across a mutual bench,
But only your name is on the flowers found.
My careful work, the agonizing hours,
My every effort, tragically the same,
Is rendered Invisible, stripped of all its powers,
Swallowed whole by an eclipsing fame.
They gather 'round your posts, a swelling tide,
A deluge of bright approvals, warm and fast.
Endorsements flow, they cannot seem to hide
The joy they feel that you have made it last.
I am a shadow in this scene so bright,
An old contact they vaguely knew, unheard.
They click the heart, basking in your light,
But never glance upon my waiting, silent word.
Our dear 'mutuals,' who claimed a deep-felt tie,
Are quick to share your links, to elevate.
They laud your verse beneath the public sky,
While my own craft lies in a silent state.
So forms the question in my empty chest:
Is it the work, the art's intrinsic worth,
Or merely the loud acclaim they love the best?
The rising star, or the quiet flame of birth?
If friendship is a mirror, clean and true,
Reflecting back the efforts we impart,
What does their universal silence do
To my ignored, distant, lonely star?
If you are seen, and I am a pale ghost,
Haunting the edge of your success and grace,
Who is the friend, and who is merely the host,
Ignoring the guest who waits within the space?|
The heart grows bitter, chilling doubt takes root.
They loved the writer, the idea of the name,
And not the soul, the person who bore the fruit,
In the quiet, solitary, unlit flame.
The bonds we trusted, once so strong and high,
Were not of iron, nor loyalty's hard line,
But paper, flimsy, easy to pass by,
Disposable in the blinding fire of your shine.
More Works by Nancy Ann Creed
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