Marigolds On My Iron Windows

Every year,

we iron the flag,

dust the portraits

of those who came before us,

and rehearse gratitude

for the air we inherited.

The nation wakes up

to celebrate

the day it stopped belonging

to someone else.

Funny.

How a house can celebrate

changing landlords

without ever asking

why its windows

were designed like bars.

The empire left.

The emperor stayed.

It changed clothes,

learnt our languages,

memorised our prayers,

and discovered

the easiest way

to rule a people

is to hand them keys

to a door

that was never theirs.

We broke the chains.

Then melted them down

into jewellery.

Wore them around our necks.

Passed them down

like heirlooms.

Called them tradition.

Called them culture.

Called them

the way things have always been.

Freedom is a strange thing.

Everyone carries

a photograph of it.

Few recognise

the face looking back.

The soil remembers

what borders forget.

The child inherits

a surname

before inheriting a sky.

The woman inherits

a body

the world keeps trying

to own.

The hungry inherit

the right to choose their master

before they inherit

the right to choose a meal.

Perhaps independence

was never merely

the absence of a foreign hand.

Perhaps the cruelest lesson

was discovering:

a hand does not need

to come from elsewhere

to become a fist.

And perhaps the deepest cage

is the one

we decorate every year,

hang flowers on,

invite guests into,

and proudly call

home.