I sit by the fence I long to leap over,

Gazing at the blue where I ache to soar—

But the clouds crowd in and make an enclosure.

The lonely night starts to pour

Its dreadful silence out,

Making the monsters lose their composure.

Some days, the fence is only wire and wood,

Other days, it’s iron, grown twice its height.

I press my palms to it, just to prove I could—

To test if it will stay upright

If my weight isn’t too much,

Or if I’d vanish on the side by just a light touch

Yet I won’t pity this heart of mine.

Look instead at the bright flower,

Who says she is perfectly fine.

She who is a princess locked in a tall tower.

Never scuffed by wind,

Never thinned by snow—

Too tender to have sinned.

Why, then, must they tell her go?

She unfolds her petals each dawn, defiant,

Though the soil is shallow, the rocks unkind.

The others mock the way she leans, reliant

On light she’s designed

From scraps of sun—

As if joy were a thing to rescind.

I sit by the fence I’m warned to keep,

Watching the trees sway their slow, sad dance.

The flower, gold in a world of a grey so deep,

They don’t even give her a chance.

If they’d only pause—just once—

They might see how beautifully she does her stunts.

Perhaps the fence was never meant for flying,

Nor the sky a thing to claim, but to admire.

Perhaps the flower’s roots, though softly trying,

Are the very fire

That keeps earth

From crumbling at the edges.

And I—

I am still learning

To call this hunger hope, to stop this cry,

Instead of of a hammer that is burning.

To call this fence

What it is:

Not a cage, but a border for defense.