The Pensive Poet
Written the 3rd August, 2026 for The Pensive Poet Poetry Contest sponsored by Constance La France
(inspired by "Two Worlds")
I built two worlds
because one couldn't hold
both the cage and the sky.
In the cage world. In the skyworld,
I learn to be small. I take up the whole sky
I fold my colours. I keep my real shape
into a drawer, Half of me blazes green.
I answer to a name. scales instead of silence,
that isn't quite my own, wings instead of walls,
I move like something waiting. and the fire in my chest
to be let out. is not a flaw to hide
The words wears a groove. but the only thing
in my mouth, until I forget. that's ever fully mine.
what my own. I answer to no one
laugh sounds like. but my own fire
There is a goddess who knows
this trick better than I do —
half her year buried in the dark,
answering to no one,
half her year blazing green across
every field she touches.
No one calls her broken for it.
They call it a season.
They call it necessary.
I am the one who fought.
I am the one who flies.
Oil does not remember water.
Flame does not remember the cage.
And yet, some nights,
they touch at the seam where I sleep,
and the whole house shakes,
and I wake not knowing
which one of us
answered the door.
If the walls came down tomorrow —
truly down,
not just cracked —
which of me
would still be standing
in the rubble,
still breathing,
still mine?
I think I already know.
I think that's what frightens me most.
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