Edges of the Head

 

A head is not merely bone and skin,

but a chamber of storms,

where thought churns like restless seas

and colours spill beyond their edges.

What can the brain contain?

It holds infinities,

yet bends beneath routines:

the labour of survival,

the weight of names,

the endless tally of tasks

that tether imagination

to necessity.

Once there was a freedom—

a childhood bright with unscripted hues,

where colours did not ask permission

to scatter,

and play was the only labour.

But thresholds arrive,

drawn by institutions,

by timetables,

by the slow narrowing of sky

into ceiling.

Here the child learns to sit,

to raise a hand,

to speak in sequence,

to dream only in sanctioned hours.

The head adapts.

It absorbs order

as it once absorbed wonder,

and the saturation of colour

dims into function.

Yet at the edges,

still,

the threshold glimmers—

a reminder that within the skull’s dark theatre

there lingers a pulse of rebellion,

a fragment of the child

unwilling to be tamed.

And perhaps that fragment

is the truest threshold:

between what we are made to do

and what we long to be.