Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

What it means to be free in 2020

Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Kayla Nickfardjam, a 17-year-old student at Miliken Community School in Los Angeles. You can find more work from our young writers here

What it Means To Be Free in 2020

Today I lay
And gaze up
Not at a sparkling sky.
But at the white expanse
Of my ceiling

Today I lay
Sandwiched amid four walls of steel and wood
And yet
I am free

Freedom does not reside outside
Frolicking in golden meadows
Roaming in the feverish bustle of the city
I do not have to venture to find it

Nor does it seek me out
Knocking at my door
Seeping through the crevices around my bedroom window
Freedom lives ​within​ me

It lies in my choices
I feel it when I choose
To listen to the songbirds’ symphony in the morning
To savor the spicy, sweet taste of cardamom tea
To relish in the warmth of the Shabbat candles on my palms
To cherish the laughs of my family members like notes in a cheery song

The world is riddled with chaos
The raging pestilence looms over us
It troubles me
And shuts me indoors
But sorrow will not confine me
My freedom
Endures

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.