10/29/21

By Josh Rubin

It has been said that until all are free, no one is free. And for those of us who choose to identify with the struggle of the oppressed, the sensation that we are not free is a burden we rise with each morning.

I don’t mean to compare the plight of the hungry and homeless and impoverished to the pain I feel. I only want to acknowledge that chains, though not now around our wrists, waists, and ankles, weigh on those of us who see them. They make us unfree, and not just in the poetic sense in which it is ordinarily spoken.

Because as I see those bodies in chains, visible ones, and witness the bondage of criminal inequality, I long to strike off their chains, as do all who read this. And I am not able to. Those are my chains I feel, their cold metal staying my hand.