Iron-Souled Poem by Elizabeth Farodoye

IRON-SOULED

by Elizabeth Farodoye

They rarely build statues for those who burned alone.
There are no medals for surviving without applause.
But you, Iron-Souled,
you are a cathedral raised from the ash of your own undoing.
A quiet force made of memory, fire, and muscle.
Uncelebrated, yet undefeated.

No one sees the days when your chest felt like a collapsed building,
when breathing was an architectural decision,
and hope…
hope was rationed like rain in a desert.

Let me tell them what they refuse to understand:
You were not born this way.
You were not born iron.
You were made,
cast in flame,
moulded in solitude,
shaped by disappointment's cold and stubborn hands.

Aloneness wasn't a choice.
It was an inheritance.
Passed down like a mystery no one cared enough to solve.

You didn't walk into solitude with grace.
You crawled into it, bleeding and barefoot,
choking on a silence that didn't even echo your name.

And yet,
you stayed.
You stayed in the furnace long enough
to learn the difference between healing and hiding,
between survival and stillness,
between noise and necessity.

You became fluent in quiet.
You learned the constellations of your own thoughts.
You sang lullabies to your sadness
until even your shadows began to hum along.

And isn't that its own kind of miracle?

Because there are days when people look at you and say,
'You're so strong, '
not realizing they're admiring the sculpture,
never the hammer.
They love the product,
but ignore the process.

They don't know about the nights you stitched your sanity together
using strands of unravelled dreams,
threaded by sheer will.

They don't know that every time you say 'I'm okay, '
you are performing CPR on yourself mid-conversation.

You've become a master of composure.
You can sip tea in a storm and not spill a drop.
You can host grief and still smile at the guests.
You can lose ten versions of yourself before breakfast
and still get dressed like nothing's missing.

But here's the truth they can't comprehend:
You don't want to be hard.
You just want to be safe.
You don't want to be distant.
You just want to be understood without unravelling.

Iron-souled doesn't mean emotionless.
It means your emotions have learned to wear disguises,
laughter as camouflage,
wit as defense,
logic as a leash for chaos.

And still,
you hold space for others.
Still, you pour from a heart they never see refill.
Still, you show up,
a lighthouse made from the bones of your own storms.

You've been mistaken for cold,
but cold doesn't shiver.
You've been called rigid,
but they didn't watch you bend,
and bend,
and bend again,
without breaking.

You are a paradox:
softness trapped inside titanium.
Kindness wrapped in caution.
A survivor who doesn't wear wounds like jewelry,
but like blueprints,
silent maps of how you found your way back to yourself.

And even now,
when trust knocks,
you listen from behind the door.
Not because you are closed,
but because you remember who left it open last time.
And what that cost you.

So to those who say,
'You've changed, '
you owe no explanation.
Your evolution is not a democracy.
They weren't there when the cocoon cracked,
when the light inside you nearly went out.

You became iron
not to impress the world,
but to survive it.
To carry your name across fire
and still say it without flinching.

Let them romanticize your resilience.
Let them quote your silence.
But you,
you know the truth.

You are not here to be palatable.
You are not here to be pleasing.
You are here to endure like scripture,
to bend time with your breath,
to remind the world that stillness can thunder
and solitude can save.

So if you love, love fiercely.
But do not shrink.
If you trust, trust slowly.
But do not apologize.
You didn't survive the furnace
to be reshaped by convenience.

You are iron-souled.
You are fire-walked.
You are the blueprint and the blaze.
You are what the phoenix aspires to be
on its most honest day.

And when they ask you how you made it,
how you crossed deserts without drying up,
how you kept your heart from turning to smoke,
you smile,

and say,
'I remembered myself in the fire.
And chose not to melt.'