When We Were Free

This piece is both memory and meditation.. A snapshot of what freedom has felt like to me. Not as rebellion, but as rhythm: jump rope songs, gossip on the stoop, the hum of childhood joy. I’m interested in the quieter, familiar freedoms of Black life—the moments that don’t need to be heroic to be whole. Here, liberation isn’t about escape or spectacle, but about presence. To live outside expectation, outside stereotype. To just be. This work asks: What if freedom was already happening in the places we’re taught to transcend?