Daughter Of The Blackstar

They said freedom came before I was born

before my first cry met the morning air,

before my feet learned the rhythm

of trotro brakes and market noise.

They said the nation had already stood up,

already stretched its back

after centuries of bending.

But I was born into the after.

Into a Ghana where the flag flies easily,

yet a girl still learns

to measure the size of her voice.

I am the modern daughter of this land

raised between proverbs and passwords,

between grandmother’s stories

and glowing phone screens.

I know how to tie my headscarf tight

against the stubborn wind of the city.

I know how to type my dreams

into places that once refused my name.

Still, the world watches me carefully.

Too bold, 

they say,

when I speak with the confidence

my brothers were given freely..

So I walk a narrow bridge

between expectation and becoming.

In the morning, 

I carry ambition

like a book pressed to my chest

pages filled with futures

my mother never had the chance to write.

In the evening

I sit beneath the same sky

that once witnessed a country rise

and I ask the old question again:

Freedom, but for whom?

Because I am here,

a daughter of independence,

still negotiating space

inside a promise made long ago.

Yet something in me refuses silence.

Maybe it is the stubborn courage

of women who came before me

the market queens,

the mothers who stretched coins into miracles,

the girls who kept walking

even when the road narrowed.

So I rise each day

with the hush rebellion of becoming.

And perhaps freedom is not something I inherited in full, 

perhaps it is something I am still building, 

step by step, 

voice by voice, 

until one day a Ghanaian girl will grow up and never have to ask 

if the freedom in our anthem was meant for her too.