Beyond Almost

The twine is brown, thin and old fashioned,
easy to break
until
it has wrapped around and around its prey,
like a life gone bad
in a hundred tiny ways
until you are an almost willing captive,

the strangulation so slow, so tenderly applied
that it feels like love,
safe and still, leaving you
no place to grow, binding you
to a sameness that protects you
from those you need no protection from,
safe, but smothering, each layer
a thing of fear, yours, theirs.

And then, when you see the knife,
sharp and angry,
And when you feel the binding fall away,
you are afraid, until

you breathe

and there is no struggle.
None.
You breathe deep,
your chest expanding,
loose and easy,
air and magic filling you in equal amounts,
music, color, wildness….
truth.

Your truth.
not a truth you were tied to,
not another’s.
Yours.

And as the last brown strand falls from your arms,
you begin to fly,
no longer safe,
no longer a prisoner,
unafraid of the night,
unafraid of the sun.

About this poem.

I often ask myself what I am a prisoner of. And why.

Tom