I am a single voice echoing 
against an empty canvas
trying to draw the world
from ideas I have yet to inhabit
where the softness of gold
fills the places I once thought
too broken to repair.
The freedom to turn toward the sun
without asking permission.
The flame I kept alive even when things
were dim 

 

And then, we gather.
Freedom becomes the colors we mix
when no one is watching
the lines we refuse to erase
The blurred shapes in the distance
something the eye reaches for
before the mind can name it 

 

One voice meets another voice
a brushstroke collides against
the lonely lines of verse
a memory meets a new imagining
The beauty of our voices
rising, side by side
Each one is distinct,
each one necessary,
each one offers a piece of freedom  
The others could not see alone

 

What we create together
is larger than any one image
A palette of colors, sights, and sounds
woven together from the heat of our
separate survivals

 

In the meeting of our visions

The future brightens

not because it is certain, 

but because we are willing 

to shape it together

to bend in the uncertainty

rather than break

Freedom is not a finished product 

It is a work in progress

A collaboration between what we remember, 

what we risk, 

and what we imagine, together.