Those that need to escape make a fantasy of it. It comes in ways that appear so playful, yet they are the smoke of the fire that burns within.
Escape is the led by the first glimmer of light in a world that has been in shadows for longer than memory and to have the courage it takes to reach for that unfamiliar promise of better days.
I wasn't escaping you. I was escaping a stunted version of me that needed to grow. That new version of me could never be yours. I guess I was escaping an emotional space that had gotten too small, as if I was Alice suddenly growing larger, about to find her wonderland.
I hear the sound of breaking glass, yet this time it is a music that vanishes deep scars; for I am the one escaping a prison invisible to others. Wounds heal as if my blood were liquid magic. Then I watch the shards shrink in moments as if the waters of the ages had weathered them to friendly gem-like pebbles, soft to my soles.
If I could have been a grown up woman sooner instead of being stuck as a girl, I would have not felt the need for escape, for that is a sense of being in a cage. There was no cage. Perhaps, in this imaginary more mature version of myself, I'd have kept us together. Not from greater care. You had far more of that than a grown man should be entitled to. No. I should have taken better care of myself. I should have had better boundaries on what I could give and what I could not give. Most likely though, we'd simply have ended sooner. I guess, in hindsight, that would have been better. We both would have found our freedom to grow, to become the versions of ourselves our inner passions were pulling for.