A Sky Beyond the Shadows.

Walking through my quiet neighborhood in Niittykumpu, Espoo, I didn’t expect to feel the weight of an old memory pressing down on me. But as I stepped beneath Haukilahdenkatu bridge, something about the way the darkness enclosed me, with only a thin gap revealing the sky above, pulled me back to a life that feels both distant and near.

 

A past where the shadow wasn’t cast by a bridge but by prison walls. Where the only glimpse of the outside world was through a small barred window. A patch of sky—just enough to remind you that freedom existed, but not enough to reach it.

 

I wasn’t there for long, but long enough to know what it means to be trapped. And long enough to never forget those I left behind. Journalists, activists, voices that refused to be silenced. Some were released. Some remain locked away. Some—too many—will never walk out again.

 

For so many of us, the greatest dream wasn’t anything else but simply to step out of the shadows and feel the fullness of the light. Again.

 

 

Fragments - 02

Done