The weight of small chains

by: Rachel Parker

| Published in Issue 57 of Beyond Words Magazine |

In this hollow of bone and blood

she waits, a small blue flame

caught behind my ribs' pale bars.

Her breast, round as a winter moon,

pulses with memories of sky.

How strange that she believes

the gold chain at her ankle

is stronger than her wings,

forgetting what her heart once knew

of wind and light and leaving.

Then one night she dreams

of morning's vast cathedral,

how sunlight scatters like prayer

across ice-blue distances,

and something wild stirs.

When she rises, my body opens

like a door forgotten in summer.

She unfolds against dawn,

sudden as joy, savage as truth,

her wings writing freedom

in a language older than cage or chain.

See how she climbs now,

small and magnificent,

each wingbeat carrying her deeper

into that great unknowing

where even fear becomes light.