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Unchaining Myself From Prison Scars

                        

 

                                                By Tristan

 

Prison does not suit me but I wear a prison suit that fits me. The neck-tie tightening each day, asphyxiation attempting to determine me.

 

My heart’s shattering desires attention, yet is appropriated by moments of vulnerability guarded in fleeting shadows.

 

I am alone here but never alone. The proximity of bodies that are confined with me, tide like a dense fog moving in on me. 

 

Traveling on a stranger’s eyes flowing like lava through blackened skies, I wait for an hour where I am not so alone. I am always waiting.

 

Crouching in the corner of my box, pulling up imaginary walls around myself. I write fragments of poems about the things I’ve done – about the things I will never do. 

 

When night arrives it’s lighter than the dark inside here. Slivers of moon catch the tips of razor wire, luring, startling my senses. 

 

My mind seizes for a moment around the totality of my circumstances. Thoughts that lie like a stinking carcass rattling around the fringes of any attempts to contemplate solitude.

 

On the outside only, needled ink represents me. The grey skin of prison has crawled upon me and sewn itself above my bones.

 

I walk edges of the sun that are about to come undone by bodies hollowed by consequences. I am swallowed. 

 

I’ve tried to live as someone else, wiggling out of my skin thinking it would free me from something. Only being able to creep close enough to change, I listened through a crack in the door where the real business happens. 

 

My hope is holding me under water just beneath the surface so I can not touch the things I see.

 

In places of my soul, I’ve adopted a habit of digging holes and hiding things inside them.

 

I see the weighted stones of my life scattered around me. Stones that might be repurposed for a stronger foundation perhaps?

 

Discovered strength is manifested for the fiercest of battles. Hours, days and years manacled, will not define. Today, a step out of my chains.

 

                                                                        Winter, 2020

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