You Called It Amateur

You sat at the end of the long table,

spine slouched in triumph,

flicking through the workshop packet

like it was catalog junk mail—

and when you landed on her poem,

the one about the jar of buttons

she found in her dead mother’s drawer,

you smiled that lazy, sideways smile,

and said,

Sentimental. Amateurish.

As if the scars on your first drafts

had been earned in some trench

others couldn’t even fathom.

But I saw your eyes scan the room after,

looking for someone to nod.

And I stayed quiet—

not for you,

but because her hands,

the ones that wrote about buttons and grief,

had more war in them than you’ll ever know.