I was taught the lines
before I knew my own edges.
Like being inside the glass at a zoo.
On display, pacing back and forth along the perimeter.
Muscles remembering distance.
Steps worn into the ground, freedom removed.
This is how the body learns a cage. Not all at once, but in repetitions.
Turn.
Return.
Turn.
Return.
My body never agreed to this.
Not the rules.
Not the cage.
Not the watching eyes
beyond the glass.
As if anything wild and unbroken ever acquiesced.
Not disobedient. Not defiant.
Just alive. Aching at the borders.
Spotted like night broken open, each mark a knowing.
This is my medicine:
To be unseen
until I choose otherwise.
To trust the dark,
the quiet,
the almost.
This is not for the gaze.
This is a body
in devotion to itself.
Sensation as prayer.
Relocation as truth.
Desire as direction.
When the cage dissolves, I am felt.
From the inside.
In movement.
In sweat.
In breath.
In the slow claiming
of a body
that was never meant
to be tamed.
© Barbara Dugan, Bourne MA Mar 2026