Too tight, to tighten our bonds
until we each believed
we couldn’t push beyond.
The comfort in conformity,
a beauty in treading
the solid, cemented lines
decided by another,
hindered like tree roots
following the maze
of a brick terrace
to reach fertile soil.
Struggling to thrive,
breaking the hard limits
to find a fingerhold,
a knuckle of space to breathe.
Released into the open,
we burst into flower.
Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. In 2019 she won the ‘Selected or Neglected Collection Competition’ with Hedgehog Poetry Press for her collection Totems. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
Emerge Literary Journal 