I AM Fire and Quench

By: Joe Nichols

I AM afraid.
I AM hesitant.
I AM able to hear the call, yet I pretend I cannot.
I AM positive about what I need to do, yet I don’t, because I am programmed.
I AM you. I AM me.
This is why this idea matters.

I wake every morning greeted by desire, and I turn my head to embrace fear, hesitation, history. It is not the fault of anyone, save me, that I AM here. I am the one who wants, the one who doubts, the one who still shows up. I am the person who has rehearsed failure so many times that success feels like a foreign city with street signs in a language I almost remember. I am the person who knows what must be written, said, built, offered, and has practiced every reason to wait until tomorrow.

People hear I AM and think chant, affirmation, wish. They think soft candles and careful tone. Let it be known. I AM is a hammer and a forge. IAM is the fire and the quench. You heat the metal of your life until it glows. You raise it to the anvil. You strike. You cool it. You raise it again. Sparks jump. Steam rises. You keep rhythm until a blade appears where a bar once lay.

There is a table at dawn with a cup on it. Empty until the two words arrive. I AM. The room answers. Breath steadies. Fear sits without ruling. This is not a slogan. It is the sound a life makes when it chooses its shape under heat.

I lay my history on the anvil. Old reflex, old bargains, old delay. I hear them speak in the polite voice that once kept me safe. Stay small. Wait for a better hour. Ask for a clearer sign. I lift the hammer. I answer with work. Each strike drives a new edge into the day. Each quench sets the temper deeper. I rise, I strike, I cool, I rise. The circle is not a trap. It is the method that turns raw metal into a tool worthy of a task.

Friend, you who live in me and you who read me from the other side of the table, hear this: I AM is not a performance for an audience. It is the heat that makes a promise true. It is the refusal to keep grabbing the same excuses from the same shelf. It is the quiet way the hand reaches for the hammer again when the arm tires.

I AM tired of being scared. I AM tired of settling. I AM tired of living smaller than the truth in my throat. I AM tired of bonds that do not feed me. I AM sick to death of a career that nourishes everything except my soul. I AM. The words do not end there. They demand proof. They demand a cut into the day that cannot be undone. A message sent that risks me. A time named that will arrive whether I am ready or not. A page offered with no disguise. These are blows that ring clear on the anvil.

There is music in the corner, a reed that remembers the wind. I lift it and breathe. The sound is not a sermon. It is a field opening. It reminds me that the door I kept staring at from across the room is unlocked from within. The key has always been two words and the step that follows them.

A man who fears the sea still steps into a small boat if he trusts the oar in his hands. I AM is that oar. I do not argue with the waves. I row. The harbor does not change for me. The current does not promise gentleness. The proof is that the boat moves. The proof is that I am in it.

If I must bless anything today, I bless the heat that readies me, the iron that does not bend to flattery, the water that seals the work. I bless the patience to raise the bar and strike again when the first edge is not enough. I bless the small, decisive acts that pull a life into alignment with its own voice. There is mercy in that rhythm. There is justice in that rhythm. There is beauty that asks for no applause.

I carry a slip of paper in my pocket. It has only the two words, and beneath them a line for the day. I AM, and today I prove it by this. I write the line. I do the thing. No one needs to see it. The steel knows. My mouth knows. My sleep will know.

Twenty one days is a long time if you wander. Twenty one days an instant temper yourself. September 24th waits like a gate swung open. Not a ceremony. A meeting point. Thousands arriving from ordinary rooms with edges bright from the work they have done. Some will bring a poem. Some will bring a promise. Some will bring a clean refusal to live one hour more in the old way. All will bring heat, and the water to set it.

If you are reading this with a tremor in your chest, take it as a summons. Do not smooth it away. Use it. Walk to your makeshift smithy, even if it is only a desk and a quiet minute. Put today’s bar on the anvil. Strike once. Cool it. Strike again. Every blow is a sentence that says I meant it. Every quench protects what you just made from your own next doubt.

I AM. Two words that outlast a crowd. Two words that do not need a stage. Two words that turn breath into steel and steel into service. Let the wish fall away. Keep the hammer. Keep the fire. Keep the water. Temper yourself until the edge you carry can be trusted in the hand you live inside.

Meet me there. September 24th. Bring what you forged. Bring what you quenched. Bring the proof that your two words belong to you.

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