When Freedom Drew a Line

Before the ink touched the map, 

there was only us— 

shared wells, 

shared festivals, 

the same monsoon beating on our roofs. 

Then someone whispered them, 

and the word grew teeth. 

It bit through neighbors, 

split prayers in half, 

turned doorways into borders. 

We were told it was freedom— 

but freedom walked in carrying a knife. One side called it azaadi, 

the other, swatantrata, 

yet the languages had once 

held each other’s lullabies. 

Now trains carried bodies instead of passengers. A girl’s name could become her death sentence. The mango tree in the courtyard 

no longer belonged to everyone— 

its roots were accused of loyalty. 

We had been us. 

Then came them, 

The word crawled into our houses, 

settled between cups of tea, 

and split the air like dry earth in summer. 

Trains left stations with hope 

and arrived in silence. 

Every milestone carried the weight 

of those who could not cross it. 

They called it freedom. 

But we saw it leak through cracks and crevices— places where light refused to enter: 

in the searching eyes of mothers 

for children on the wrong side of a new country,

in the silence of a friend’s name you could no longer say aloud, 

the widow left behind in a city that no longer spoke her name, the farmer whose land became a border post overnight, 

the child learning to hate a face that once handed him sweets. 

We had been us. 

Then came them. 

And in the broken spaces between, freedom did not arrive at all— only its shadow, 

trembling. 

We had been us. 

Then came the line. 

And in the broken ground it left behind, freedom never learned how to grow, in the soil that failed 

to hold two histories at once.

-by Nithila