The Cage Without Bars

By Sneha Manna

I was born into a world, 

I could never call home. 

a world that completely belonged to him, 

his voices, his choices, his dreams. 

From my first breath, 

he started shaping me,

not as a human, but as an artifact

to be carved and polished,

until I shone with his expectations. 

His hands taught me lessons I never wanted to learn,

lessons that left fingerprints on my skin.

I was five when he pressed a pillow over my face,

not to tuck me in,

but to see if I could disappear.

but unfortunately, death could not defeat me

My hands were tied. 

He placed tools I did not choose, 

into fingers too young to resist.

My feets were never free.

"Walk this path," he instructed, 

Without caring what dreams I have, 

what path I want to follow. 

Sometimes, I wondered if he loved me,

or if he loved the reflection of himself

that he painted over my skin.

His words stained my childhood

with the bitterness of control. 

He often used to say, 

"Everything i do is for you".

yet nothing in it felt like me.

I became a mirror,

gleaming with his expectations,

yet hollow behind the glass.

Like a tree bent to grow against its will,

my branches reached for a sun, 

I was forbidden to touch.

He called it protection.

I called it a prison without walls.

My dreams were beautiful, delicate things,

but he swept them away. 

Gradually, maliciously, 

tearing and murdering my heart 

from inside. 

Sometimes I felt like a ghost, 

other times, I felt like a slave,

bound not by chains,

but by a debt I never owed.

I still remember when he told me, 

“You’ll thank me one day,"

but how do you thank someone

for stealing the air from your lungs? 

Is that what love is? Control? 

And how do you explain the ache

of living a life that doesn't feel like your own, 

as though your soul

is only a guest in your own body?

He calls me with

words so filthy that they disgust my soul,

staining it like the blood I coughed up last winter.

"You're just a burden."

But I carry him on my back every day.

Sometimes, I feel like screaming, 

tell him that a roof over my head is not love,

that feeding me does not make him a father,

and survival is not the same as living.

But my voice is inaudible from years of  swallowing my own pain.

He never asked if I was happy or sad, 

never asked what's bothering me. 

He only asked why I was never like the others,

why I could not be the son he prayed for.

I trace the bruises on my arms like constellations,

wondering if there’s a world where I am treated as a human,

world where my voice is not a mere whisper, 

where love does not come with conditions,

where fathers do not break the daughters they should protect.

Tell me, do you understand,

How cruel it is, 

to be a bird without feathers,

a violin without strings,

and a river dammed before it could flow?

Many Years passed, nothing changed. 

I still walk his path,

like a hollow vessel, with an empty heart,

carrying his dreams. 

Standing like a flower too scared to open,

afraid that the sun will burn the petals.

And i truly wonder, 

one day, if I disappear, 

Will he look for me?

Will he cry for me?

Maybe he will call my name,

in an empty room, in the silence I leave behind,

but the walls will only echo back—nothing.

and the wind will whisper, 

"She is not here anymore."

Maybe that day, he will understand 

the worth of me, 

the importance of caring for someone

when they are still present in their life. 

By Sneha Manna