what they are

 

​the bars didn’t move.
they never do.
steel’s got better things to do than reinvent itself
for your little epiphanies.

an egg splits…
a wet, blinking question
dragging itself into air.

the chick is a comma with legs,
all tremble and squeak,
and the cage is a cathedral then,
a whole sky made of room.

it doesn’t know measurement.
doesn’t know “no.”
it knows warmth,
it knows the slop of morning,
it knows the ridiculous miracle
of being allowed to exist.

it hops three inches
and believes it crossed a continent.
and the bars…
same old bars…
just stand there,
leaning on their own boredom.

later, feathers come in like a bad attitude.
bones lengthen,
the chest fills out,
the heart starts pounding like it’s late for something.
the cage shrinks without moving.
that’s the trick.
the bird looks left,
right,
up…
and suddenly the air has edges.

it wasn’t the metal that tightened.
it was the mind that learned geometry.
the chick had no map,
so everything was frontier.

the grown bird gets a ruler,
and now every distance is a verdict.
we call it “wisdom,”
but half the time it’s just accounting:
a grim little clerk in the skull
stamping "limit" on everything that breathes.

and still…
still…
the bars haven’t budged.
only the belief has gained weight.

you can live your whole life
in a space that never changes
and swear the walls are closing in
like they’ve got lungs,
like they’re conspiring,
like the universe woke up mean…
when really
it’s you,
finally tall enough
to see where the ceiling is.

and that’s the cruelest part:
nothing has to get worse
for you to start calling it a prison.
sometimes the world stays exactly the same
and all that happens
is you stop believing in “enough.”

the cage is a fact.
your belief is a mood.
but moods run this place
like drunks with keys.

so the bird grows,
and the old room becomes a lesson,
and the lesson becomes a sentence,
and the sentence becomes a life.

until one day
it’s staring at the door
like the door owes it money,
and the bars…
those loyal, unromantic bastards…
just keep being bars.
unchanged.
waiting for you
to decide what they are.

​

​

© Sreedhari Desai