When he let me go, he didn’t set me free. He set himself free so that he wouldn’t have his freedom taken from him. He died inside walls of metal and glass, not within the concrete box that he deserved. He chose his way out to reach his freedom and disregarded me as he made his planned exit route his own reality. I often wish he had taken me with him but I know he couldn’t have done that.

I was the by-product.

The leftovers after a feast.

The residue.

He built for me, instead, a cage. Its construction took years of careful crafting and, gradually, it formed well – sturdy and strong. He prepared it for me. It laid in wait for the day that I would inhabit it; for the day he would send me to it.

Of course, he hid it from me. I hadn’t seen it until the day that I came to be trapped in it. It jarred me because, for a fraction of the most peaceful of moments, I thought I was free. You would have thought I was used to being shut away, but that brief moment, and the intricacies of that new cage, with its complex locks, and ever-changing structure, was a different kind of cage. A pretty hell of his design, except this time, I was alone, and he was free.