Prompt / Free Will

Will or Wheel of Fortune?

Contemplating self-determination

Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

Free will is never free or
accessible to the many
who carry centuries
of afflictions from ghosts and
haunts and the living dead.

Sorry, Simon, you are not an island,
not a single entity unconnected, unfettered
and unencumbered by who and what
went before or who haunts your
waking hours in this existence.

We are products, as much as computers,
assembled in pieces and parts,
each carrying a reason for being,
each a part of the whole,
with predesigned purposes in place.

Rolling off the assembly line, we
are no less a brand than Apple or
Microsoft or Stephen King,
our stories already written,
endings pending more data.

We are all that came before us
but are not only what came before us,
for there is a chance here, now—
slim for many, expansive…