Wild Horses — A Poem

I live between the closing doors,
The shifting moods, the silent wars,
A careful guest in borrowed light,
Who speaks too soft and sleeps too slight.

I tread where fragile feelings lie,
Read every look, decode each sigh,
And wonder if the air would ease
Without my weight upon the breeze.

Perhaps the laughter would return,
Perhaps old wounds would cease to burn,
Perhaps the world would settle down
If I were not still hanging ’round.

Yet this same ghost has followed me
Through every branch of every tree,
My parents’ home, another place,
The same old ache, the same lost face.

No room has ever felt quite mine,
No hearth has drawn a lasting line,
I linger like a passing storm,
Too restless yet to find my form.

I am a leaf the wind has caught,
A half-forgotten, wandering thought,
Not rooted deep enough to stay,
Not brave enough to drift away.

And oh, how often in the night
I dream beyond these walls of white,
Where wild horses cross the plain
And never bow to fear or shame.

They do not ask if they belong,
They do not change their hearts for wrong,
They run beneath the open sky
And never need to justify.

Their manes are tangled with the dawn,
Their hooves beat steady, sure, and strong,
While I have spent my years confined
To every cage inside my mind.

I want to run where they have run,
Toward the gold of setting suns,
To cast my caution to the air
And leave behind this threadbare care.

To be no burden, be no plea,
No shadow asking to be seen,
But something fierce and something free,
The truest version born of me.

And if the wind should call my name,
I would not answer it with shame,
I’d lift my face, I’d spread my wings,

And follow where the wild horse sings.

For somewhere past these roads I’ve known,
Beyond the ache of not belonging,
There waits a field untouched by fear,

Where I am wanted simply for being here.