Once, I felt the stunning, stunning, kaleidoscopic
World
was made of doorways to glittering realms—
a thousand skies
waiting for my astonished feet to enter.

The future sang
in wild colours I didn’t know the names for—
a language of rivers splitting open,
of moons rehearsing their silver scripts behind clouds.

Then came the shrinking—
the narrowing corridors of days,
the blue-edged hours
that bent under the weight of time
like flowers strangled by frost.

My heart became a room
with locked windows,
dust gathering in the corners
where sunlight used to kneel.
The future—a startled bird
I dared not wake.

Because whether I choose the quiet field
or the whirlwind-life,
the clipping of wings folds the sky in on both—
and it aches.

and yet—somewhere under this ribcage,
a throb of fierce music remains,
a tide climbing the ladders of my spine.

I want the old hunger back,
I want, I want, I want
the dangerous dreaming,
the beauty of fearlessness
that burned in my marrow
before the clipping of the wings—
whose triggering memory I have worn like iron.

I want to be light again,
to fling the windows of heaven wide,
my idea of heaven,
to let the earth feel my pulse until it trembles
to walk straight into the wind,
scatter every feather of fear
until even the dark forgets my name.

to lift my face like a dare
towards whatever storm waits—

I want to be, at last,
the one who walks
with re-attached wings.