Hello, it’s Saturday which means it’s time for our Resident Author to drop in and give us another sample of her work!
This week we’ve gotten a poem, with a short message beforehand. Here’s what Taylor had to say about it:
“Well it was inspired by Raif. He wrote about how he used to lock his door at night and check the locks on his windows in fear of criminals, but once he lived among them, showered, changed his clothes, ate, slept with them watching, he realized that these people weren’t monsters. They laugh and cry as he also did. They got angry. So, it’s kind of about all prisoners. Those who are treated poorly if that makes sense.”
And now for her post:
“Imagine living your daily life, enacting all of its details, in a small 215 square-foot room, accompanied by more than thirty people accused of a variety of criminal activities. In prison, I socialized with people confined for criminal offenses: killers, thieves, drug lords, and pedophiles. My interactions with them altered many of my faulty understandings in regard to the world of criminals. Before my imprisonment, like any other person, I would go to bed after I checked all the windows and doors in my home, for fear of criminals. Now, I lived among them; I slept, ate, showered, changed my clothes, celebrated and cried, got angry, laughed out loud, and screamed my lungs out… all while surrounded by their leering eyes. I focused on changing my way of seeing them. I pulled the curtain from the other side and started to explore the depths of their world. It took me a while, but I came to the conclusion that criminals laugh, too. Yes, they fall in love, feel pain, and are capable of deep, soft human emotions.” – Raif Badawi – “1,000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think”
The Prisoner
Am I not someone’s child?
Do I not bleed or cry, laugh or rejoice?
Do I not feel pain?
Do my needs not matter?
Why do you treat me so unjustly?
Why can’t you see what is in front of your eyes?
We are clothed in the same skin.
Yet you treat me as if I am trash.
You leave me in a cell that is bare and cold. where I can hear nothing but my own heartbeat and feel nothing but my own thoughts eating me alive.
“Let me out. I will do better. Please, let me out.”
No one answers.
No one comes.
I am alone.
In shackles, I wait.
I plead for the mercy that will never come.
I shy away from light, from noise, from touch.
I’ve been in this cell too long.
I am too broken to fight anymore.
Take this away.
Take this away.
Take this away….
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