decorate the cage

It’s hard to make this feeling musical.

No melody alive could carry this hollow.

Even if I stripped these words bare

and spoke them plain into the air,

some drummer somewhere

would still drag a beat from the bones.

But this is not silence.

Not the lack of rhythm.

This is the pain of once holding something warm

and watching it be withheld

for nothing.

No locked gate.

No warning sign.

No barricade of iron or law.

Just a road that starts in sunlight

with everything you prayed for in your hands,

then bends, slowly, smiling,

away from where you need to go.

You cannot turn around.

Time is a hallway with one door.

It closes behind you

each time you breathe.

And say you rebuilt it.

Brick by faithful brick.

Say you found the same hands,

the same room,

the same first light.

Would it live again

with all these wounds still open?

Or would it curdle on arrival,

go bitter on the tongue,

another beautiful thing

spoiled by being touched too late?

So why do we keep walking?

Why feed the machine that hollows us out?

Why return to altars

that never answer?

Maybe we mistake endurance for purpose.

Maybe we call repetition hope.

Maybe we love ourselves so little

we decorate the cage

and name it home.