March Thirty-First: NaPoWriMo: Cage — Behind the Bars of Time

We’ll be back tomorrow with our first daily featured participant and resource, along with a prompt. But for now, and to help out all of you for whom April 1 comes a bit earlier than it does to Na/GloPoWriMo’s secret headquarters (yes, our lair is built into a volcano), here’s an early-bird prompt: Pick a word from the list below. Then write a poem titled either “A [your word]” or “The [your word]” in which you explore the meaning of the word, or some memory you have of it, as if you were writing an illustrative/alternative definition.

Cage, Ocean, Time, Cedar, Window, Sword, Flute.

I cannot believe I am doing this again this year. After last year's miserable attempt and getting my site removed from the Participants’ Sites due to sheer embarrassment, and then getting it added again this year moments before starting the response for this early-bird prompt for reasons I cannot psychologically concoct right now:

I will probably not post this link in the comments. So, I am choosing the word "Cage." Could it be any more obvious? (I mean, I highlighted it above; that's why...)

In a world where time dances with shadows.
There dwells a bird in a cage of illusion.
Trapped in a cycle of self-doubt's spell within the bars of fate.
Marinated in procrastination's fear,
Its wings, once vibrant with the colors of dawn,
Now wilted, tangled by the ego's sneer.

Each day, the sun rises in a golden blaze.
But for this bird, the dawn is but a distant memory.
It believes it has all the time to spare,
Confident it can step out whenever it dare.
Its cage a prison of perpetual lateness,
A cruel symphony of missed opportunities and regret.

Crispy wind blurries the day into evenings.
Oh, how the bird longs to soar through the skies.
To feel the wind beneath its weary wings,
To embrace the freedom that beckons from beyond.
As it finally moves to take flight,
Reality's wind slaps with all its might.

The world outside moves with purpose and grace.
For time waits for no feathered friend,
While the bird languishes in the sauce of its own making.
Its cage, a silent witness to the passage of time,
a reminder of all that could have been, but never was.
And the moment of freedom finds its end.

The world spins on without it.
Late to emerge from its self-made prison,
The bird learns the hard lesson of time's precision.
As it mourns what could have been fair,
A symphony of regret fills the air.
Soaring dreams now shattered on the ground.

Forever late to the dance of life,
In the cage of hindsight, the bird is bound.

- Oizys.

April 8th, UPDATE: After marinating this piece with self-doubt, procrastination and ego of having all the time in the world, I am posting the link to my response to this early (but, actually, super late..) prompt hoping no one will discover this humiliating chronicle of tardiness.