Footsteps

Footsteps

written by: Camille

@gowerrichelle75

 

I dream of a long-awaited freedom.
I find myself alone on a beach.
Pale sands before me stretching to the azure blue of the ocean.
I turn and I notice that there is but a single trail of footsteps in the sand behind me.
The soft golden plain before me untouched, unspoiled, virginal.
I breathe the warm sea breeze and my throat is tight and rasping.
I glance down at my body and discover I am naked.
Vulnerable and unprotected.
My form is thin and fragile and I muse I must have been here for a time.
As if emerging from the deepest slumber, bleary-eyed and cloudy of mind.
With a tangible feeling within of a severance, a long-awaited shift.
I squint far in the distance and to my surprise, I see a house atop a hill.
I notice that the windows of this house are crisscrossed in iron bars.
There is a long drive leading to a set of unyielding padlocked gates installed amidst high stone walls that surround the property.
I remember then…This is the home of my childhood.
An incarceration felt long after I had flown.
Those same bars and walls carefully recreated and erected in my own life, by my own hand.
I take a final glance and turn away.
The single set of prints in the sand a reminder of my own path, waiting to tread.
Realisation that the old ways can no longer serve me.
An awareness of the power within me to break free from those who seek to control, silence and limit my growth.
The walls and bars offering not protection, but oppression.
A disconnection and detachment from others and ultimately from oneself.
Waging a war against an invisible enemy until one is but a vessel full of fear and discontent.
I shall not visit the house on the hill again.
My home shall be without walls and endless as the ocean before me.