The Day the Chains Fell

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.