Zsófia Hajnal

Bird in a cage
You want to be free
Imagine the world more beautiful
Than it could
Ever be

And so
The idea of wonder
Is born
And sung in an age
Of captivity

Zsófia Hajnal is a Budapest-based Hungarian economist and poet. In 2024, while her doctoral dissertation Reinterpreting the Moral Economy, written at the Corvinus University of Budapest, approached its final stages, a selection of her poems titled Unfulfilled was published as well. She is a contributor to the upcoming anthology My Sweet Mother. Zsófia lived five years of her childhood in Germany and studied for several months at a UK university as a young adult. She began writing poems and anecdotes in the late 2010s. What she enjoys about writing—beyond self-expression and the recharging function of the process—are the frequent coincidences, mostly in the form of rhymes that arise in the lines as if by external design. Zsófia is a regular reader at the open mic events of the Budapest Poetry Collective.

This poem appeared in What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On — Winter 2026, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project.  You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.