Words are as common as raindrops
They leave their marks on our clothes, on our shoes
They trickle down our ordinary cheeks
They rest on our ordinary skin.

Quenching our thirst,
They refresh us
Relieve us
And their overflow spills down gutters, just to be reused again.

Ever so powerful, they stand in our way
At times there are so many that they drench us
They streak our makeup and flatten our hair…
Trickling down our ordinary backs
Resting atop our ordinary shoulders.

If there are so many words circulating through our lives
Getting used, altered and reshaped until they are new again,
We must each be a writer,
Right?

If millions of words occupy the tips of our fingers,
Squat on our tongues, waiting ever so patiently to be tasted and pulled apart
We are all Kiplings, Poes, Dickinsons
Each one of us skilled and therefore none of us skilled,
Right?

What makes a writer good?
What separates one’s ability to form sentences from the next person?
I can string the millions of words that surge through my brain together
But perhaps not uniquely – The person beside me may have that exact same ability
Who’s to say that my sentences are more colorful, diverse or sophisticated?
What makes me any better?

Who tells me if I am a writer?
I sit here spilling the words that pile up behind my forehead
But there’s an infinity of people who can do just that,
Right?

With each sentence that careens recklessly off my tongue,
I taste it and seek refuge in its syrupy sweet tang
For these words are mine
These sentences are real
But perhaps I will never really know if I am a writer –
The answer trickles away with the stream of words that I don’t use.
Deluge or sprinkle, I will the downpour of words to never relent.