Trapped

Navaris Darson

I am no more than a firefly
suffocating in a sealed jar—
my loudest screams, muffled,
reverberating outside the glass
as a faint fizzing, as insignificant
as my prayers for benevolence
from a presence sensed beyond
the blur and distortion of this prison 

I want to scream so loudly
that I break the pane of this existence; 
I am screaming in futility for release,
subject to the whims of an obscure being
that seems content to amuse itself
with my dimming and demise

There are some who believe
that we are one and the same—
that I am not only the fly
but also the palm and the fingers
smudging the glass,
that the hand
that tightened the lid
is an extension
of my highest and wisest self,
and this impossible struggle
is for my greatest good—
but what if it is reversed?

What if we are the same,
but I am being held
by a less enlightened me—
two of me existing simultaneously,
because (surprise!) I am everything, 
and the cosmic irony
is that I am paying the price
for my own ignorance
and unintentional malice
manifested in another form? 

How strange to think
I might fly without limitation
if I were not in the hands of a lesser me

(If only we both knew what I know)

But if it be so, then I must also be
the jar and the lid, not fully conscious,
but aware and powerless to intervene,
complicit as a weapon in the torture
of myself at the hands of me

I am told that I, as the firefly,
might defy this confinement—
that if I can detach from myself
and have faith in me-as-hand,
I might untwist me-as-lid
from me-as-jar
and offer all-of-us salvation 

And if there is no incarnation
that can set me-as-fly free,
I might still transcend this bane
(though I remain in the jar)
if I can somehow surrender
and by some means submit
to the harsh perplexity
that this is all-that-there-is

And if I perish, so be it—
if it be Our Divine Will

Because God is in the firefly,
the jar, and the lid—
and also in a human 
who cannot comprehend
that divinity
should not be held hostage

And in that truth,
there might be a sense of freedom
found in knowing 
that we are all captive—
that even God is trapped inside of us all
like a firefly in a sealed jar,
dying to be let out into the world

November 26, 2020