say a prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages

I am trapped in a cage.

***

I am trapped in a cage, and I am all alone. There is no one but me here in my cage. There are sometimes people just outside, but otherwise, I am always alone.

***

My cage is made of glass so that I might see out, and others might see in if they choose to look. It consists of two halves, two parts, two environments in which I may dwell. One, the land, is a small forest leading to a tiny meadow. The ground is not wet, yet not too dry, and there is lush grass all over. In one corner is an outcropping of rocks, partially covered with moss. The trees are tall, greens and browns and greys. The meadow is pretty and green, but there is only one flower, a forget-me-not, right at the edge of forest and meadow. I take great care not to accidentally tread on it.
The other half of my cage is water, deep and clear blue and fresh, bubbling up from the bottom. There is a rocky wall in the back, and rocks of varying size and shape almost artfully placed or stacked along the bottom. Water plants of all types grow throughout, but there are no fish.

***

I am in a cage, in my two environments, and I am not always human.
When I am in the forest, my face elongates, my body shrinks, my legs shorten, my arms get longer, my knees reverse, my spine lengthens, my skin ripples into a beautiful grey pelt, and I am a wolf. My senses are heightened, but that does not really matter. There's nothing but the bubbling of the spring and the wind in the trees to experience with them. But my forget-me-not smells better. I run through the trees and the meadow, climb the rocks, and constantly gaze through the glass of my cage. I am very lonely, here without my pack.

When I am in the water, I retain my humanity above the waist, but my legs grow longer, fuse; my skin ripples and seals around them into iridescent blue-green scales and fins, then up to the front of my torso to cover my bosom, and I am a mermaid. My new tail allows me to achieve new speed and agility that I could never have hoped for otherwise. Swimming with it, I feel my most graceful and so I twirl and twist through the water, in and around the rocks and plants, exploring my aquatic realm at leisure, and with no apparent need to come up for air, though I have no unsightly gills.
But after a time, even swimming like this becomes old without any companion. I look through the glass, lonely without anyone who accepts me.

***

I am in the cage, in my two environments, human, wolf, and mermaid, and no matter what I do or do not do, the ones who put me here yell at me every so often. Too often, lately. Their voices, like any voices, I can hear through the glass, and sometimes they'll be there looking at me. Telling me they have no choice, this is for my own good until I learn this lesson.
But the only lesson I have learned is true loneliness, and that no matter how hard I try, I somehow always end up falling short, disappointing, unable to truly succeed outside of my cage.

***

I am trapped in a cage, alone, a cage of two necessary parts, that houses my two necessary parts, and I am slowly losing my will to be free. After all, there's still my flower...