Much Like Free 

It’s Independence Day and the country is celebrating, but I can’t say I feel much like the same. Don’t really know if I’m feelin’ all that free, if I’m to be honest. Grief holdin’ me hostage. Ain’t no particular pattern, rhyme nor reason to it neither. It show up when it want to, like an unexpected relative thinkin’ they got it like that, just burst right in once you open the door and outstay a welcome they never received in the first place. 

Much of the time folks feed me from the same menu. Say often, “I know what you goin’ through.” They believe they do too because they either lost they Momma or Daddy or a sibling.  But this here different, cause I done lost them all within just over three years and ain’t nobody left but me. I keep a turnin’ to my left, right, sometimes glancing behind to see who of my immediate blood still here wit me. But they gone. All gone. Outside myself it’s quiet, but within, the memories of ‘em dance with me all the time. 

I like it quiet on the outside, ‘cause I enjoy the company I keep. I look about at every square inch of this house I now occupy that we all used to, and at any given moment I hear a memory and laugh or cry. This I tell you can carry me for decades on end. Yet this too don’t feel much like free - more like imprisonment because these lingering memories can sometimes have a hold on me when I fail to release them be. When time say it’s time to saunter with a fresh me. But I declare, this here thing got a grip on me. 

How the heck am I supposed to move on when every one of yous behind? Y’all left in a short narrow straight line.  Ya ain’t gimme time. Never began crying for the first when it was time to bury Momma. Now I’m juggling four of you but I ain’t moved past you, Momma. And I’m living in a world that’s no longer the same. It reeks of strange; it feels dulled and mundane, folks still talk the same, trivial and plain. My world so different now, forever changed. I know struggle, I know pain. I’ve seen life, death, and each of your lives end just before life everlasting. Now the world want me to return to work all the same. It’s in the same place where I left but I ain’t, and that’s a damn shame. Got me wondering which of us ain’t really much like free? Who really imprisoned? Y’all or Me?