sara Etgen-Baker Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

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<em>Poet’s Note: Imagine Dragon’s song, “No Time for Toxic People” inspired this poem; it was written based upon an image of a young woman breaking free from a toxic, abusive relationship.</em> (pinterest.com/pin/473792823318075850/)

poem submitted to the “Imagine Dragon” poetry contest, Robert James Liguori, sponsor, September 8, 2026. 

Psyche at the Threshold

She stands where broken tiles  
echo the tremors she once carried alone,  
her gold skirt flowing like a fallen sun  
as the chains keep their cold vigil  
against her slender arms.  

Butterflies rise anyway~  
a rabble of bright Psyche-born messengers,   
their wings stirring the stillness  
with the soft insistence of prophecy,  
guiding her toward the open door  
where Eos spills her first forgiving light.

Their flutter is a fragile scripture,
the kind Ariadne might have trusted  
when she placed her trembling faith  
in a single thread.  

Here, too, a thread glimmers~  
not woven, but wing-borne~  
lifting her gaze from the stone-bound dark  
toward a threshold where Mnemosyne  
remembers her without sorrow,  
and Persephone’s quiet ascent  
whispers that even the underworld  
cannot keep what longs for dawn.

In that widening brightness,  
the chains don’t fall;  
they simply loosen  
as if the Moirai themselves  
have revised her fate.  
Her breath stutters.  
Her pulse wavers like a prophecy  
she’s afraid to believe.  

And the butterflies~  
not saviors,  
not symbols,  
just small companions  
refusing to leave her  
circle gently,  
guiding her into a light  
she hopes  
will not vanish  
when she reaches for it.

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Paige Hind September 8, 2026 at 8:08 PM butterflies and light "she hopes will not vanish when she reaches for it." <3

Alison A Smith nee Howarth September 8, 2026 at 5:32 AM A deeply moving free-verse poem, rich with classical allusion and luminous visual imagery. The mythic figures—Psyche, Eos, Ariadne, Mnemosyne, Persephone, and the Moirai—give her escape a timeless, almost sacred gravity, while the butterflies’ humble role as “small companions” makes the hope feel tenderly human. The gradual loosening of the chains is especially powerful: liberation arrives not as spectacle, but as a fragile, believable turning toward dawn.