Postcard from the Cage

Freedom or Merely Release?

Independence is often defined

as liberation after being conquered.

But what happens when the cry for freedom

leaves you more cornered than before?

More imprisoned, more silenced,

Until the declaration itself becomes hollow;

“I am free, but my soul remains captive.”

Because what was granted was external liberty,

what was granted was far less than inner liberation.

And a nation or a person can wave flags in daylight

while their hearts still weep behind the unseen bars.

II

They said it was freedom.

The leaving, the silence,

the convenient forgetting.

They said, 

And you almost believed them.

It’s strange how easy it is

to mistake absence for grace,

and a locked door for a blessing.

You spoke of liberty as if you understood it.

As if detachment was love’s final gift.

As if ghosts don’t haunt.

But you'll finally learn: 

Freedom that costs your soul

is just a cage without guards.

And the most brutal kind of colonisation?

To tell someone they’re free

while still holding the key.

So today, as flags rise and anthems play,

I light a candle for every soul that walked away 

thinking they were liberated when really,

they were just left to heal alone.

III

Today, the world shouts Independence.

But I whisper an honest truth:

Liberty is meaningless without completeness.

And I’ve discovered that in the embrace of someone 

who welcomes the resonance of my voice,

who doesn’t fear the sound of my choice,

the fire of my soul or the weight in my thoughts.

Independence was it about releasing oneself 

or was it about being liberated?

Or simply a notion that reveals

freedom was always an illusion.  

And is that where 

true liberation begins?

WRITTEN BY

Ray FL

A wanderer of dimensions beyond the traceable.