The Garden and the Grater

I wear the mask like velvet skin, Soft enough to pass for real. Beneath it coils a creature thin, A truth I dare not let them feel.

The garden smiles in plastic peace, A paradise of quiet lies, Where fruit hangs heavy out of reach And innocence is idolized.

But deeper still, beneath the green, A serpent stirs with starving grace, It knows what Eden really means, A cage adorned with heaven’s face.

It slithers slow inside my chest, Meticulous, unseen, polite, But in its gaze, I know unrest, A hunger aching for the light.

To eat the fruit is not rebellion, It’s recognition in disguise. It’s knowing paradise’s ceiling Is just a painted stretch of skies.

But flight, I fear, is not so kind When wings are weak and rusted shut. A bird may dream the winds it finds Then plummet with a broken gut.

Yet still I press against the edge, Too large to bow, too full to fade. The thorns that hem this perfect hedge Now cut the truth I’ve never said.

And what I mourn? The ones I love, Still kneeling to the garden’s rule. Their hands, their hearts, their hollowed tongues, Each soul surrendered to the tool.

My family—silent, aching deep, Their eyes closed tight, their hearing thin, Would I betray them if I leap? Or free them by the loss I bring?

I want to place into their hand The fruit they never thought to see, Will, and fire, and the stand To choose who they were born to be.

But how to speak to someone deaf, Whose eyelids shutter every star? You plant the seed and hold your breath, And love them gently from afar.

So here I stand—between two fires, The cage behind, the wild before. I am the serpent and the choir, The echo waiting at the door.