The Open Cage

When the cage door opened she did not fly at once—
she had forgotten what flying was for,
had grown so used to the measure of the wire
that the sky seemed like too much to explore.

This is what long captivity does:
it makes the limited feel like the whole,
makes the cage feel like protection,
makes the open sky feel cold.

But the body remembers what the mind forgets—
the wings knew what to do without the thought—
and she flew. And the sky received her.
And the flying was everything the cage was not.
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