🖤 When I Don't Live In Fear 🖤 Poem by James McLain

When the mind is without fear,
and knowledge runs naked in the streets,
like children released from school,
unburdened, laughing in the wind—
an indelible mark is left on the land.

We have walked through fires,
our skins blistered, tongues bitten down,
until blood was the only language,
but when fear is cast off, a baptism —
water cools the burning, cleanses the mind for revenge.

The land remembers us,
it holds the weight of our footsteps,
the whispered secrets, shared beneath the bright stars,
stories woven into the dirt,
rooted in freedom, in the absence of chains.

This is where we live—
in the space between heartbeats,
where all are welcome,
where the earth trembles
not in fear, but in anticipation.

Knowledge grows here,
not in books, bound and forgotten,
but in the mouths of our elders,
in the eyes of our children,
in the touch of hands that have known great pain.

The land is our canvas,
each step, each word,
leaves a stroke of color,
a truth that cannot be erased,
etched deep into the bones of the earth.

When the mind is without fear,
and knowledge is free,
we live not just for ourselves,
but for the echo of our voices,
for the generations yet to come,

who will walk this land,
see the marks we left,
and know, in the marrow of their being,
that they are not alone,
that they are free,
And need not atone but for the wrongs of the another.