The Return of Freedom – After April 12 | szigetingy creative writing

Sixteen years were dark.

Not a night, but a shadow cast upon us by others.

Freedom did not arrive.

It found its way home.

The old system did not collapse.

It simply let go of itself.

Like a weary tree that had carried its own shadow for too long.

Hope is not a shout.

Hope is a quiet sentence:

"Now it is possible."

April 12.

The country did not change in a single day.

It merely began to remember that it could.

Freedom is not a gift.

Freedom is reclaimed space.

Reclaimed air.

Reclaimed voice.

Healing is not a celebration.

Healing is silence.

And silence is the place where beginnings become possible again.

After sixteen years, the greatest miracle is not that the world has changed.

It is that we have begun to believe that we can change as well.

The future is not a promise.

The future is an open window.

A society does not heal because it declares, "We are free."

A society heals when it no longer needs to say it.

Freedom is not victory.

Freedom is return.

And every return is the beginning of a new direction.

 

György Németh (1959) Creative Writer (Szingy Gallery Budapest)

The Return of Freedom – After April 12 | szigetingy creative writing