Mohini
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
They called her rare.
As if rarity were a kindness.
As if beauty were a favour.
As if being wanted
were the same thing as being safe.
She was taken gently at first.
A small hand on the back of her neck.
A promise disguised as care.
A cage introduced as protection
from a world they insisted was too dangerous
for something like her.
They told her she was lucky.
Fed her on schedule.
Measured her worth in offspring,
in compliance,
in how still she could stand
while being looked at.
They loved her loudly.
They loved her publicly.
They loved her in ways
that never once asked
what she wanted.
When she resisted,
they called it temperament.
When she paced,
they called it instability.
When she bared her teeth,
they called it proof
that the bars were necessary.
No one asked
what a body does
when it is admired but not free.
What a soul becomes
when it is fed
but never allowed to choose.
She learned the limits of the cage
before she learned the shape of the world.
Learned that hunger is not always about food.
That captivity can be furnished.
That survival can be mistaken for consent.
And here is the part we don’t like to say:
The door was never fully locked.
It is easier to believe it was.
Easier to call the cage inevitable,
the walls immovable,
the cost of leaving unbearable.
Because freedom asks something terrifying of us.
It asks us to step into uncertainty
without applause.
To give up the familiar ache
for a risk we cannot rehearse.
The cage offers structure.
Predictability.
The illusion of safety.
It says:
Stay.
Be good.
Be quiet.
You will be fed.
And so we stay.
Not because we are weak,
but because we are trained.
Because we were taught early
that love is conditional,
that resistance is dangerous,
that survival requires shrinking
until the bars feel like bones.
Mohini was not born for the cage.
Neither were we.
Freedom was always possible.
But it was never going to be easy.
It was never going to be granted.
It was always going to require
the moment where we stop mistaking
containment for care.
This is not a poem about blame.
It is a poem about remembering.
About the wildness we learned to call impractical.
About the power we tucked away
to make others comfortable.
About the door we were told not to touch
until we forgot it was there.
Mohini did not fail.
She revealed the cost.
And if we are brave enough to look at her,
really look,
we have to ask ourselves
the only question that matters:
Not who built the cage—
but why we are still inside it.
Because freedom is not a myth.
It is a choice we make
after we stop confusing safety
with surrender.
And once you see the door,
you can never unsee it.
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
This poem marks a deliberate turning point: not self-love declared prematurely, but self-harm consciously ended. Ceasefire frames acceptance as a strategic decision rather than an emotional breakthrough—an agreement to stop treating the self as an enemy while acknowledging that affection may come later. It holds optimism without erasing damage, offering a vision of peace that is tentative, earned, and quietly radical: the permission to exist, unfinished, without continuing the war.