Lioness

I am a lioness.

But not the kind that roars in the open field.

No.

I am the one who drags herself around the cell with eyes ablaze, muscles taut, a body boiling with unlived life.

I choose to stay. I choose to chain myself.

I close the doors to my own vastness.

I am wild, and yet I fall silent.

I could devour the world with a single look.

I could set fire to everything I touch.

My soul is made of claws, of desire, of skin that burns from the inside.

I am fire.

I am fury.

I am flesh that pulses and demands.

But I contain myself. I shrink.

I make of myself a muffled echo of who I am in full.

I, who am a storm, let myself fall as drizzle.

I, who am a volcano, bury the lava.

I, who was born to explode, pretend delicacy.

I pretend normality.

I pretend I don’t want more.

That I don’t want everything.

But my body screams.

My body… ah, my body.

It knows.

It remembers.

It trembles in the cell like a hot, sweaty secret.

My skin begs for touch, for tongue, for nail.

For release.

I am a lioness bleeding with desire.

And yet, I stay.

As if it were possible to tame this thirst.

As if it were enough to take a deep breath and pretend I don’t want to tear the world apart with my teeth.

I am the cell.

I am the key.

I am the prison and the prisoner.

I am the contained explosion that, one day... and that day is coming... will destroy everything.

Including me.

And when it happens, let it be with moans, with screams, with sweat and with fire.

Because I was not born to be small.

I was born to be the roar.