Azura, a jail is the
coldest, worst
place to be in.
Because the staves are shuttled over with a stark,
unprinted silence drawled out in the dark,
in a double dream which to yet spell out,
which only brews a storm who was given
birth by the stream of the hopelessness
pouring out of the clouds.
It reminds you of the old despondency
of day and night, of island emptiness
and solitude, unsponsored, free in the canvas,
of that wide water, inescapable,
pressure to blend with the world.
And as you sit in a room with bars
that your own soul is too afraid to
escape from, it reminds you that you are
trapped.
It traps your soul in these
bars. It reminds your faded
humanity—that is swimming inside
your bones—that you have no speck of
intelligence to escape through the bars.
It devours your mind into thinking that you
belong there. Maybe he thought so too.
Maybe when he clawed my mom's face and
tore open her blouse, he wanted his soul
to be trapped.
And maybe when he wrapped his fingers
around my tiny wrist as I stared in his eyes,
he knew it would be best if he was trapped.
Because what kind of father
dares to hit his own
four-year-old son.
My father.
And as his voice crept up behind me
with a sting of hatred and disgust, I
cringed and I could feel the tingle run
up my spine like a race to maybe a chance
of heaven or even a dance with the devil.
And when I asked him, "Do you
care?"
It became clear that people
are like ice;
they crack underneath pressure.
