Adhere to the Jungle

        They began to wake up all at once, peering through the last seconds of foggy sleep. Their breath hung in the air, heavy and thick. They stood up in unison, the mob of compliant rebels. Cold and saturated, they took in their surroundings- their reformatory. 
The prisoners were suspended in water droplets as they hung from the winter twig. They wriggled and pleaded with the sweet dead dogwood to release them from their transparent, malleable prison cells. Their calls for help echoed throughout the forest as if they were all from a solitary voice.
         As their hearts carried on, steady and in tune, they caused the droplets to tremble and quiver. The ripples came and went and came and went, like waves bashing on the base of the cliffs- never ceasing. Their hearts raced faster and their lungs burned, as if aflame, while they filled to the brim with the succulent melted snow that dripped down on them off the branches like saccharin frosting. The wintry condition swirled around them, cascading down from their fingers to their toes, sparking fleeting moments of burning pain. Soon enough, the anguish froze and numbed them.
         The prisoners looked down from their lofty encasings, down into the labyrinth below where nothing could possibly be as cruel as what they now endured: to be in a jungle full of amazement and wonder only to be restrained. The prisoners repented for being there, but what they had done fazed them not; it passed through them like a whisper in the water.
         The dogwood kept them, waiting patiently and fearful; it would wait until it knew they were cleansed, ready to be birthed from their water droplets, like its flowers in the spring. The captives struggled and tried to curse and threaten what they did not have the courage to comprehend, longing to scream and be heard.
         Everyone wriggled at once, trying to break free, but alas, the captivity was of their own design- an encasing as fragile as it was impenetrable. They would never truly be free of their self-made penitentiaries. Their punishment would be to remain as they are. An eternity would slip through their fingers soaked with the opportunity of a fresh new life, and the prisoners, with their stubborn pride, would do nothing to alter the path that they had first chosen. The winter twig wept for them as they broke out in screams of silence in the sweet droplets in a jungle with a myriad of hearts that were all beating concurrently.