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“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” – John Muir, American environmentalist

This week we both wrote and drew into the spaces created by what ever came before. The opening poem describes green vines growing into the cracks in the walls made by both love letters and bullet holes. The whole range of human experience however beautiful or violent created space to grow. Through their work as artists and writers, each inmate explored that while they do not wish a repeat of some of their past experiences, they recognize that something else can grown from them.

In the pieces below, you will read an account of these experiences and the writing process each writer engaged in to explore each experience.

WHAT HAS COME TO PASS

It doesn’t matter what came to pass.
More often than not life has put me right on my ass.
There have been times I worked so hard, only to fall harder
like a candle in the wind/trying to withstand the pressure.
A children learning to ride a bicycle/truth be known
You need to fall in order to gain some balance.
Have you ever blown out a candle to relight it?
The flame travels down the smoke to be greater than
the one your breath lost.
I personally believe everything comes with a cost.
We don’t know what kind of pain to anticipate
until we are burned.
It doesn’t matter what came to pass.
If you prepare today, tomorrow will be easy.
I don’t mean to sound cheesy.
Leave the past where it is/gone by too fast.
One thing I learned, hard as a stone.
Everyone has a sad story/ I used to tell
mine all the time/thinking about all
the tears, pain, how gory.
My daddy taught me everyone’s lives vary.
Sympathy lies between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.
It’s not what it was.
It is and always has been what you make it.

DB

***
AWAKENING
to awaken for no good reason…

I allow myself to awaken for no good reason. Thinking of things that don’t matter right now. Thinking about people who don’t care about me no more. I’m pretty. I want what I can’t have. Do I waste my time on people who don’t give a shit about me, but will answer my text and be someone to talk to at a moment’s notice or do I wait to confide in the realist ones who will tell me what I need to hear? The thing is though that I only hear what I want to. I’ll only chance if I want to. I can only save myself. “If it’s not worth crying over the you won’t.” Is it really that simple? I have to let go and let go of the past and pain that goes along with it. Let go of the people who don’t really love me. I have the power. I choose me. I choose freedom. Time for my last tear to drop. Time for some shut eye. Goodbye.

TB

***
FIRE
I’ve decided to waste my life…

A fire burns that no one can see but it is there, ever present, through the rain of the tears that fall on the windowpanes to my soul. One little pill and it’s the devil in disguise. I listen to the lies and float away unscathed once again. You. can’t. make. me. come. down.

The heat and the flames cause scars that are beyond repair. Do you even see them?! One, two, three, four…that’s how many parts it takes to make me whole. Piece by piece, I eat them. I lost count again. “Oh well – it’s just a number…Do it until the black comes and you don’t have to wake up, it really is the best way.” That’s the advice that the little horned man whispers in my ear…

“Okay–I guess you might be right…” as I swallow some more. Black. Yes, that’s the one I want. I always choose black.

AG