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A collection of silver forks lie nested sideways
Photo by nico_blue on iStock

The hard truths of incarceration
I mush into a
digestible purée.

I hand-feed this
to my kin,
to my grandmother,
Ammuma,
two oceans away.

What else do I do
for those who sleep beside
the ghost of my absence?

I feed them
the truths of my dreams,
the truths of my resilience,
the truth of my word,
like how when I
was a baby
they fed me
the soft truths of life.

As for the hard truths of incarceration,
the truths of alienation,
the truths of grief,
the truth of lies,
I gulp them down
whole.

Disclaimer: The views in this article are those of the author. Prison Journalism Project has verified the writer’s identity and basic facts such as the names of institutions mentioned.

Rāmdev is a poet incarcerated in Pennsylvania.