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