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The air smells different now
cleaner, somehow.
Like a breath I’ve never taken before.
June, 1865,
a warm wind brushes against my skin,
and I stand taller than I ever thought I could.
No more the shadow of a master’s whip,
no more the sting of lashes in the night.
No more the silence in the fields
where I buried my voice beneath the soil.
They say we are free,
though I don't yet know
how to walk in this new world.
Freedom feels like a heavy cloak
I don’t know how to wear.
But I wear it now,
my shoulders no longer bent,
my heart no longer shackled.
I remember the sound of the auction block,
the bitter taste of salt and fear,
the names they called me,
the ones they took from me
before they gave me a number.
I remember the names of those
who never saw this day,
who never tasted this new breath.
And now I whisper for them.
All of them gone.
Gone, gone, gone
but never forgotten.
I hold their names like the sun
holds the sky
alive in the blood of my bones,
alive in the light of this new dawn.
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