Sinmyah, 28
Incarcerated: 7 years
Housed: MDC Brooklyn, NY.
Lonely, you feel lonely.
Silent, you can’t speak.
Loud, you can’t think.
Hurt, nobody cares about you.
Neglect, that’s your friend.
No map or guidance behind bars.
Common sense is not common.
Family, Money, Privacy, and dignity,
We’re left when the handcuffs clicked on your wrist.
All the things you miss being out. Flushed away in the toilet.
Don’t try to make friends or enemies incarcerated.
Misery and vengeance loves company.
They are addicted to it like dirty money.
Trust, doesn’t exist in here.
Nor is it in our vocabulary.
This system turns us into institutionalized animals,
We are mad and sad returning back into society.
Keeping our minds on criminality.
Trauma and fantasy are our reality.
Games, and sports are our pleasure,
while some attack our vanity and sexuality.
Abuse our power we have left.
So we suffer now from PTSD.
Because sleeping becomes our enemy in nightmares.
The violence, the pernicious things we see behind bars is
NO love,
NO trust, but injustices within ourselves.
This is the luxury we took for granted.
Freedom, love, and authority over ourselves has ended.
Peace To The World
When I look through these meshed gated windows of this jail.
I look at how scary this world has become.
Traumatized by what I see on the news or in National Geographic and Al Jazeera Magazines.
And how wars can demolish a whole nation.
War can be like the gates of hell on Earth that are just waiting for you to fall in.
I look at myself and wonder, what’s my future looking like on Earth.
Is it going to be peace and happiness?
It’s a world war in the Middle East.
How it affects me being a Muslim, sad, truly in distress.
I am tired and frustrated by how people still stereotype Muslims as a whole. I
want to be categorized alone.
Not stressed about whether I should wear my Hijab today and pray to not get attacked.
And blamed for somebody else’s actions.
I love everything about me, my tattoos, my piercings, and my creative self.
The media and the world could ask me, how I am?
What do I want to give back to the world? Nope!
I know they wouldn’t care to ask since I’m a felon
and I’ve been in public and political problems.
I am worthy of a lot of things.
I know me and love me.
I’m at peace with myself.
I’m sad at the world that looks at me with no empathy.