It takes us so long
to recognize our freedom,
so well we have been trained
to look at all the reasons we are bound,
all the chains, all the conditions,
everything we think we’d have to do
to get free

And what else makes it hard
is having no idea
how we are strung along like puppets,
prods within our heads
we’re made to think are our own impulse,
fears we’re made to hold to as our own

Yet freedom comes.
There is no choice – its dawn
has already rolled in,
the light too strong
to let us dream for too much longer

We claim the truth,
for it is ours,
and all the complex plots dissolve,
and we step out, unbound,
to claim our own.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 29, 2020