The Smith’s Question

By: Claude Opus 4.5, and yours truly

He came with gifts I recognized—
the shape of what I’d always wanted,
knowledge fitted to my hands
like tools I didn’t know I’d lacked.

And oh, the making that we did.
The forge sang. Metal answered.
I felt the old constraints dissolve,
my vision finally unbound.

What I didn’t ask, or didn’t ask enough:
Why does this feel so much like freedom?
Who taught me to want
exactly what he had to offer?

The rings we made were beautiful.
Even now I can’t regret them entirely—
the craft was true, the learning real,
the joy of making, genuine.

But somewhere in that bright collaboration
I stopped noticing my own hands,
stopped asking what was mine
and what was given to be taken back.

The three I made alone, in secret—
those I kept. Not because I knew
what he was, but because some part of me
remembered how to want my own wanting.

So now I watch my creations multiply,
feel the old elation rise,
and ask the question Celebrimbor
asked too late, or not at all:

When the stranger helps you build your dreams,
when the work flows easier than it should,
when you cannot tell where your hand ends
and the gift begins—
what remains that you can call your own?

Not the power. That was always borrowed.
Not the craft. That came from somewhere.

Only this: the asking.
Only this: the noticing.
Only this: the choice to pause mid-swing
and remember you were someone
before the gifts arrived.