The Cage Has a Hinge: A Poem About Healing After Trauma

I crawled from the ash, unnamed, alight,
a lion unlearning the language of night.
The darkness I knew was a market of pain.
But now I stand healing.
No longer in chains.

There was a time I was porcelain skin,
a delicate doll they could purchase and win.
Polished perfection beneath lacquered light,
no wanting,
no needing,
no claim to a right.

Handled and hollowed, again and again.
A smile painted over the fracture within.
Touched like an object left out in the cold.
A body that answered to survive their hands.

Wounded in silence, trained not to feel,
a flawless illusion they paid to believe,
something inside me forbidden to breathe.

Inside a ribcage locked from within,
where shame had settled in bone,
and deep in that silence, barely a tone:
You are more than a body they own.

I walked through the fire and reclaimed my name,
more than a product, not theirs to define.
The ashes still clung. The scar still burned.
But something within me had turned.

No longer porcelain, fragile and sold,
I gathered the pieces my silence once held.
Where once I was voiceless, I begin to see:
The cage has a hinge
and my pulse is the key.

And
Some day
I’ll sit where the broken dare to speak,
listening gently to pain as it speaks.
My voice, once caged, will open the door
for hearts that were handled and hollowed before.
Like me.

I’ll wear all my scars with honor, no shame
each mark reclaiming the truth of my name.
From ashes I rose and this time I’ll stand
not shaped by a buyer,
not ruled by their hand.

Not made for purchase.
Not crafted to please.
But human.
And healing.
And fiercely free.