Cage

When I first came into the world, You put me in a beautiful cage – A present you got when you were young; You promised it would keep me safe You said the bars were always there To stop the world from getting in; That everything outside of them Could only ever lead to sin I learned to love the shape of it, And learned to hate the light that shone Up from the windows looking down Outside my sacred metal home I thought that this was happiness – To suffer and obey with pride, And so I never questioned when You smiled and fed me “medicine” I quickly learned to feel ashamed, When holding tight my little cage; I hated that I could not stop Thinking of ways I could escape One day I saw a bird outside And saw how free and far he flew Without a cage to keep him safe Or rules to tell him what to do Then I thought about your words, And how I trusted for so long, Believing all the lies you told: The poison that I’d swallowed whole That day I knew I’d grown too big, As the cage around me groaned and cracked, And so I bent its fragile bars, And promised never to go back.