Some places catch wild songbirds, drag them from pure mid-flight dream. Some people do the same with souls that are what they have not.
I've been caught time and again in soul-nets. Who hasn't? Intimate, the loss of power to move, the wrench from freedom is exhausting.
Living death. It isn't always clear how or when it happened. Gutting to admit, for reasons best known to your misty soul, you colluded in your capture. An unholy tryst. Or so it seems.
Bared to the moon, aghast at distance; cold between each here and there, you gaze and shallow-breathe. Life is not the problem, it's the struggle for survival. Knowing that it only takes an inch or two of stagnant water for a song to drown; for sight to blur and fade.It isn't Life that hurts; it's the agony of losing freedom's pulse.
When sky becomes a cruel, taunting dream you cannot quite recall. Times like that I wondered how I fell to small from such lofty maiden flight; why astronomy confined wild stars to quadrants, pinned each one to the wall for vivisectioned thrill.
Times like that I wondered when the mirror got so empty too. But I know better now. Again. Stars are still whole. Like me. Like you.
It's not the fear or fall that kills you. It's the dainty chains around your throat, the bitter quadrants that divide and drive false hearts to try and own what they have not.
*images: Jean-Paul Avisse &
