Free, You Say?

An Imagined Dialog on Meaning

This poem began as a meditation on language. I was thinking about the wonder of words, as well as their limitations.

So much of our experience is shaped by language. Words help us make sense of what we feel, see, and believe. They point us toward connection, understanding, even beauty. But they’re also just… symbols. Approximations. Fragile bridges stretched between inner worlds.

Often, it’s the simplest phrases that reveal how easily we misunderstand one another. This is because every word arrives carrying layers of memory, emotion, and interpretation. My meaning may not be your meaning. Sometimes they align. Often, they don’t.

This poem imagines a conversation between Voltaire and an admirer, centered on one famous phrase. It explores what happens when we explain without listening, and how meaning is often something we discover together, in the space between.

Oh, and I’ll just leave this here as a cultural reminder that even the simplest words can spark an existential crisis. 😉

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François-Marie Arouet, Seated Voltaire (circa 1779-1795 by Jean-Antoine Houdon)

“Francois?” I heard you say, looking in my direction.

“Oui, Monsieur?”

“I feel trapped," you said.

“Well,” I responded, 
“Man is free the instant he wants to be.”

But you looked puzzled. 
Tilted your head, 
like a dog hearing a word it almost knows.

Ah, perhaps “free” confuses you? 
Not freedom from chains — 
nor taxes or tyrants or gods. 
Not that brittle kind. 
I meant the kind you find 
when the wanting stops. 
The soul, untethered. 
A wind with no direction.

You started to speak — 
but I knew your question before you asked… 
Ah… it’s “wants” that trips you up? 
Desire, yes — but not the craving kind. 
More like… intention. 
The inner leaning forward, 
the yes before the yes. 
Surely you know?

You squinted, still unsure — 
so I cut in, certain of how to clarify. 
“Instant,” then. 
That’s where people stumble. 
We think: clocks. Seconds. 
But what I mean is more like a spark — 
no duration, just ignition. 
Now, collapsing into now, 
collapsing into now again.

Your brow furrowed. 
Oh, it is “to be,” then! 
Now that’s the meat of it. 
The mightiest of questions. 
Hamlet knew. 
To endure or to dissolve. 
To hold form or fall back into the formless. 
“To be” is not action. 
It is admission. 
A whisper of presence, 
just loud enough to echo.

Finally — finally — 
I took a breath. 

You leaned in ever so gently, and asked… 
“What is meant by the word ‘is’?”

The air was still, motionless. 
I looked at you for a moment. 

A sentence with no center. 
The verb beneath all verbs. 
The breath we mistake for a word.

“Is.”

A threadbare bridge between thought and thing. 
A trickster. 
A tautology in disguise. 
We chase it, 
and find ourselves chasing.

And then…

I laughed. 
You laughed. 
And language… 
caught red-handed — shrugged. 
We watched it slink off into silence. 
Every word, every meaning, trapped 
in its own puzzle.

And in the pause that followed, 
we did not speak. 
We did not need to.

We 
simply 
were.

Free, 
perhaps — 
at last.

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