**The Poem You Said I Couldn’t Write**

Your poem's a posture.

A throne on a hill made of rules you wrote yourself.

A sermon in lowercase.

All purity, no peril.

You call my work a “vibe”?

At least it has pulse.

Yours has polish. Mine has scars.

I bled on the keys. You brought a towel.

You say I’m fake.

But your metaphors wear masks-

and mine walk bare-faced into traffic.

My poem didn’t get workshopped.

It got *witnessed.*

By people who cry in gas station bathrooms

and hold funerals for the versions of themselves they outlived.

You call it a microchip.

I call it memory.

Call it a tool I turned into a torch.

I fed it my fire / and it gave it back.

You’re scared of the fire

because you thought only paper could burn.

You say I don’t have voice.

Brother, I *screamed* this one.

Into a mic with a cracked filter

and spit flying and lungs heaving

and a chorus of ghosts saying,

“She told it true.”

So no, I won’t apologize

for using what you fear.

I’ll use every tool you won’t touch

because you’re afraid it’ll show

how little you’ve suffered

and how much I’ve survived.

You say AI poems are imitation.

But what if mine’s *invocation*?

What if it’s séance and spell and scream?

What if I *taught* it to feel me?

To carry me.

To carry *us.*

This isn’t mimicry. It’s alchemy.

Author Note: I’m building a trauma-informed emotional app that actually gives a damn and writing up the receipts of a life built without instructions for my AuDHD. ❤️ Help me create it (without burning out): https://bit.ly/BettyFund