I thought I was free because I could choose
Until I wondered, who taught me what to choose.
I call it my decision, my desire, my life,
But beneath the surface, something whispers first.

A childhood I barely remember, a wound I never named,
A fear I thought I’d conquered, a love that taught me pain.
Perhaps I choose my actions, but I don’t choose their cost.
Every road has consequences, every gain contains a loss.

And somewhere in the silence of the mind I cannot see,
There are forces shaping me that I mistake for me.

So, tell me – am I truly free
If I don’t know what moves me?
If my past is in my present, if my fears decide my flight,
If unconscious hands can guide me, while I believe I’m holding tight—

Then perhaps freedom was never being able to choose.
Perhaps it is only becoming aware of what chooses through you.
Because sometimes, everything inside of you cries except your eyes.
And sometimes, in searching for the answers, you lose the ones you had.

Until you’re standing at that strange point
Where you don’t know the point—
You’re simply – at a point,
Wondering whether the road you chose was ever yours.

Maybe we are free, maybe we are not.
Maybe freedom is only the beautiful illusion we need
To believe that the choices were always
Ours.

[A poem exhibited at The Optimist’s Incomplete Exhibition and also performed at the Heritage Day, as part of the Benue Book and Arts Festival at the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum, Eastwood, Nottingham on 12 September 2026]

Mary Ohanusi’s work explores the spectrum of human emotions, ranging from the seemingly mundane to the profoundly complex. Her writing role model is Chinua Achebe, whom she believes wrote mostly from quiet observation, and she also reveres writers like Niyi Osundare and Lenrie Peters. Mary is from Nigeria and currently writes from the UK.