A heart-within-a-heart.
A stranger who, with primal tendencies
and hostile demeanor, tries to break
out of the cage my heart has formed.

Every now and then, the cage shudders
underneath the stress it is undergoing.
Cracks pop up like daffodils after a Scarlatan shower,
but I am always replacing the weakened bars,
adding new ones in, splicing them together with barbed wire,
double-edged with thorns on both sides.

I know I am only playing a game of time with him:
either he tires out or I no longer have any will to hold him in.
For all my learned knowledge and acquired skills, it is he
who forms and shapes my dreams and passions and my sorrows.

I fear that if I let him out of his cage,
he will open his wings
and fly away
and say, "I told you so."

I will never see him again.

Penned by my hand on the 9th of Aeguary, in the year 454 AF.