The cage door has no lock. I know this because I checked it a thousand times, running my fingers over the seam where the iron kisses the air. It is not rusted shut. It is not welded. It simply waits . And so do I.
They call it instinct—that low, humming wire strung between the ribs. Not the roar. Not the fang. Something quieter. Something worse. instinct unleashed kind nightmares
So I sit on the floor of the cage at dawn. The lock clicks. Imaginary. The sun rises. Real. And I wonder: What if the monster wasn’t the one who broke free? What if the monster was the one who stayed inside— and called it love? The cage door has no lock
It is the midnight thought you do not finish. The hand that hovers over the stove’s red coil. The cliff edge that whispers, step closer, just to feel the math of falling. It is not welded
I dream I am running. No—I dream I am chasing . And the thing I chase turns out to be my own spine, unspooling like a tape measure across a dark field. “You measured this wrong,” I say to no one. “You always do.”