I am unchained.

A surprising number of the rules people live under were repealed years ago and nobody circulated the memo.

The manager who watched the clock left in 2021, and there is still a small guilt in leaving at half five. The relationship where you learned to check before making plans ended, and the checking did not.

Constraints outlast their causes. The shape stays long after the thing that pressed it there is gone.

So freedom is often less about breaking out than about testing a door you assumed was locked. Some of them simply open. You have not tried the handle in years.