Borrowed Freedom Poem by Cathleen Hodgkinson

For E.D. who will never understand the gift he gave me.

I wear a silver bracelet on my wrist with its native american facade and I am reminded of a commended freedom and of peaceful spirituality.
Things that are not easy for me to acquire in my world, but easily in a world of others.

The bracelet does not belong to me, but I can feel his energy channeled through it and it warms me.
Between his life and mine, even though so different yet the same, the meaning of the bracelet has taken a life of it's own.

I am compelled to wear it, in rebellion, shedding all constrictions and conformities of who I am expected to be.
My heart, my body are consumed with carefree rapture at this newly found concept.

To dance barefoot on the grass, in my favorite faded blue jeans under the moonlight and stars,
with nothing but the feeling of simply borrowed freedom.

(September 2007)