Lost-and-Found

And I do

I walk through the program

I walk to the showers

I walk to the mess hall

I walk around my cell

I walk to each of the corners

with more corners surrounding me

Kadon, Amir, Smoke, and Rah

I have to put in time

in the mess hall

cleaning tables and washing dishes

Here, they punish you

while punishing you

Then one day

Kadon says

Ay man, come to the library

Library? I ask

Maybe I’m wrong, but you

look like you know what a library is

he says

He’s my shadow

always therequiet

then he asks

And how come you don’t rhyme no more?

’Cause I don’t have shit to say

no more

Come on, man

There’s always some shit to say

We in hereLook, man

it’s ’cause you in the mess hall

cleaning up

You gotta earn back some of

that free time so you could

come to that poetry class

Stay on that straight and narrow

Don’t fuck up like those

other times

Kadon says

eyes still wandering

Everything he says

makes sense

but the way he’s acting

like some shit is ready to pop off

any minute now

doesn’t make sense

How do you do it, bro? I ask

How do you

not lose your mind in here?

Kadon laughs

Every day I lose my mind

Every fucking day

But you know what?

I find it again

That’s the thing about being

locked up

Whatever you lose

you’ll find it again

over and over

You know, like the

lost-and-found at school

Some cardboard box

that all the shit gets dumped into

The shit that people forget

Yeah, we’re that box—

a fucking lost-and-found

I laugh a littlefor the first time

And whatever stone and brick

that’s been inside of me

weighing me down

turns into bubbleturns into air

and floats up and up—

I feel you, man, is all I say