Work Text:
I mistook you for copper—
destined to forge with tin
to make bronze.
But I misread your name,
and my own as well.
We were never metal.
I was the fruit—
bruised, crushed, fermenting toward becoming.
And you were not copper, but a cooper:
a vessel-maker, shaping a place
for wine to age while you held it.
Your walls stained purple
as I transformed into something new—
a sweetness you would never taste.
We were never meant to stay there forever.
Wine left too long in the barrel
doesn’t deepen—
it turns bitter.
Your purpose was the season,
not the keeping.
You held what I was becoming
until I was ready to be poured out.
I left not to escape you,
but because remaining
would have ruined us both.
I was becoming something
that had to be poured—
not stored, not hidden in oak,
waiting.
I offered you the bottles
from that season—
your choice of what we made—
but you never opened a single one.
Maybe I wasn’t your vintage.
Maybe you prefer whiskey—
burn over bloom.
Maybe you saw only the stains
and mistook them for damage—
never realizing they were proof
the wine was ready.
Maybe you believed
you didn’t deserve to taste it—
as if joy were a prize to earn
instead of receive.
Or maybe—
you remembered only the bitterness
that seeped into your walls in the early days,
never knowing the real reward
was what poured out later.
You held the cask.
I became the wine.
And every lesson, every turning—
you left unopened on the shelf.
You mourned the strain in your walls,
not knowing the swelling
was the sign of change—
that the gift of our transformation
was always ours to share.
I poured out the first fruits
and left a bottle as a gift for you.
The rest went into a new wineskin
to carry along my journey.
Then I carried the barrel
to the forge.
A quiet blessing as I broke it down.
The wood became the fuel.
The iron hoops melted—
refined into steel.
I shaped them into something enduring:
a blade to carry
the rest of my journey.
Not bronze—
steel.
You crafted the barrel.
I carry the sword.