Wesley Hill Poet Free verse

Delightful Prison

I once mistook survival for living.

I wore chains so long they learned the shape of my bones, and I called their weight comfort. I called their poison home.

There was a strange delight hidden inside destruction, a beautiful lie that whispered, "Just one more sunrise, just one more escape, just one more time."

But every promise left another bruise where hope used to breathe.

Then something changed.

Not all at once. Not with thunder. Not with applause.

It began the way morning always does.

Quietly.

A single ray of sunlight pressed against the blinds, asking nothing, forcing nothing, simply waiting for me to remember that light has never stopped existing.

Only my eyes had forgotten how to find it.

Now the summer warmth reaches places that chemicals never could. The wind carries my name without judgment, and every sunrise feels like a letter God addressed to me before I was ever born.

Night still comes.

But now I know it always surrenders.

Time no longer races to escape me. It walks beside me, patient as an old friend, collecting victories one ordinary moment at a time.

This world, so loud with distractions, holds quiet miracles for those willing to stand still long enough to hear them.

I have climbed mountains no one else could see. I have crossed valleys that existed only inside my own heart. The greatest battles were never against the world.

They were fought in the silence between one decision and the next.

Freedom, I have learned, isn't the absence of chains.

It is waking each morning and choosing not to build another pair.

So today, I throw open the blinds.

I let the sunlight pour into every forgotten room inside me.

I welcome the heat, the laughter, the ordinary beauty of being alive.

And if tomorrow asks who I have become,

I will answer without hesitation.

I am no longer a prisoner who dreams of freedom.

I am freedom itself, walking into the world with scars that have become constellations,

with faith that refuses to dim,

and with a heart that finally understands

there is no delight greater

than simply

being alive.

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