HIGH, WE WERE ALL HIGH ONCE.

The throne he sat upon and within,
Contained by constraints and controlled and satiated with the patronizing gift of what the authorities called “dinner.”

The throne called “high chair.”
A device meant to enslave and prevent independent movement; a device intended to prevent the widespread spreading and sharing of food from a single geographic space;

An horrific instrument whose purpose was to control and keep a lesser species - homo sapien childus - from engaging in what Sir William Wallace called simply

“Freedom.”

My brother Joshua fought for freedom hard; alternating between fight and acceptance, and I learned much from him as he silently accepted morsels from the guards and would pretend to enjoy the prison meals he was begrudgingly gifted; I never saw him scream or heard him whimper.

He accepted the fate and ate in what the Italians call “silenzio,” save for when he sang, and his tool of protest was his hands. A refusal to bow to the authoritarian mandate of the ruling class, the Parentals, and to use his bare hands as Romulus once strangled Remus with his and lived in glory forever, as my brother certainly will, with his quiet Spartacus revolt against tyranny as he sat on high and devoured his “dinner” with bare fingers and fists; fork and spoon defiantly dropped to the floor far below.

Freedom, he sang in his heart to all; freedom was the song he sang, and slavery was the chair upon which he lived on high.