From within the metal cage

My mother’s cage by Hong Chun Zhang

I thought I was free, until I realised I was free within my cage. Once I tried to walk out of it, then I felt the resistance, felt society’s talk about how a single woman is not safe alone in the world. I was safe in the cage, repeating the constant muttering of my owners. They taught me to fly, you see—but only as high as to the dome of my cage. I was well fed and taken care of, like a parrot behind bars. But is that how you define love, by keeping your “possessions” locked up in boxes, in safes? I have grown, the cage is too tight now. I need to get out before the bars cut through my body and kill me. My soul is bruised already. My heart has given up, strangled by the steel, but my mind still pushes me on, the only thing untouched by metal. I need to get out to survive. I realize that I would rather suffer and die a free bird rather than remain alive as a suffering soul stuck in this place…
I thought I was free, but now I know I am not. I could look out of that large window, I could see my friends flying dangerously close to death in the world. Any moment they might fall, might be shot down, might be caught in a tempest and whipped to death by the winds. But they are living, and I am only alive.