Freedom’s Water

I take a glass of freedom from the table, but it shatters in my hand.

Its water cannot be contained, and it flows clean through big city streets and small town roads, from Flint, Michigan to the Navajo Nation.

At first it tastes bitter sweet, like exoneration after being jailed for a crime you didn't commit, or a sports team changing their mascot while drills break ground on sacred stolen land.

But soon, the glass ceiling above my head is encouraged by what she sees in her reflection.

Excitment shakes her loose until she cracks and breaks, sending tiny shards to gather with the broken pieces of all the drinking glasses in every state. Together they make a shiny new floor that has room enough for everyone to stand surefooted and tall.

And once we're shoulder-to-shoulder on this level ground, we have a better view. We can see that our institutions are not made of stone, as we've been taught.

No.

They're just fragile glass houses, so we pick up rocks and take aim.

Exploding like fireworks on the 4th of July, their pieces fly across the sky in technicolor as they catch the sun and cast rainbows. Even the darkest of places - from the Westboro Baptist Church to The White House - are blanketed in vivid color.

Other fragments melt in the warmth of UV rays and drip down onto cold, colorless spaces, coating them in toasted caramel and dark chocolate hues whose flavors are as rich and complex as they look. And now every business and theater and city council knows their people flourish when fed more than a steady diet of white bread.

When we drink of freedom's water the next time, we do not sip, we gulp. It tastes like nothing we've ever known, delicate and delicious.