Like Salt Like Sun

Independence is a weight lifter. The people are her hands, their voices the muscle along her bones. Across her hips run a thick rope, attached at the end is an anchor. She carries it with ease, letting it ground her with its rust and decay, her history. Sometimes it pulls her under, straining her muscles underneath rolling waves and the weight of the modern world. 

She carries it all.

Yet...Independence is more than a weight lifter, she is the salt on my calloused brown hands, reminding me of Ghandi as he sat against wet sand, silent with unwavering eyes. She is a flower pressed against a grave or against my mother's greying hair. She is a gaudy joke spilling from red lips without repercussion, a hook with an affection for words and the choice of them.

She is so many things, defined best by a noun you cannot grasp in your language or ours. So listen: do not try to claim what you, yourselves cannot define. 

Do not expect compliance for we are not afraid to raise our fists, our brooms, our voices. We are many, all together different and you are but a single force, all too similar to things we have faced before. 

We are her hands, expect her to use them.