We were once told to bend our heads and fold our hands, as if we were not the bearers of life itself. To obey without question. To swallow our own thoughts because they might trouble the air. To feel nothing, or at least to pretend we didn’t.
We were made to feel small—irrelevant—a placeholder until someone else’s story arrived. A means to an end that was never ours.
We watched our mothers, grandmothers, the women who shaped us, wrestle the world with bare hands. We watched them shrink themselves to fit inside someone else’s shadow. We learned their exhaustion in the lines on their faces, in the way they clutched at a little bit of importance, just enough to remember they were still here. They became our cautionary tales. What not to be. What not to do.
And when our turn came, we took the blade to the chain.
We stepped out of the cage.
We no longer whispered our truths to the walls—afraid they might set the stake aflame beneath our feet.
We spoke.
We roared.
We became the conquerors of mountains that no one thought we could climb.
And then—there was you.
You wanted me to say I loved you. And I did. I meant it. But to love you meant clipping the most sacred thing I had—my wings.
To be with you meant grounding myself in a place where the sky was forbidden. Where my spirit could not roam. Where I was seen only in the way you wanted to see me, and I was asked not to look too far beyond you.
But a bird that cannot fly will die.
And die I did—slowly, beautifully, in the way flowers do in winter when the frost creeps under the door. My smile went first. Then my spark. Then my will.
When the wind came and lifted the feather from my chest, I knew it was time to find somewhere new to land. Somewhere I could breathe without asking permission.
I knew you’d find someone—your perfect echo—who would orbit you like the moon. Who would hold your gaze as if you had invented light. Someone who would not mind the cage.
It was never going to be me. I knew it long before goodbye.
And when I found my way home, it wasn’t to a place but to a person. The arms that never strangled me with their love. The one who understood the language of my chaos. Who stayed when the storm hit. Who didn’t just stand in the rain with me, but matched my lightning with their own.
They saw me. Not the version that fit in the frame—but me. The soul born from the same star, lit with the same flame. My twin in the ways that matter.
For a moment, there was us.
And that will never change.
But the truth—the one you never wanted to hear—is this:
I was never yours to hold down.
And the part that will twist in your gut, if you ever dare to let it in…
I could have loved you forever.
If only you had let me fly.
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