Growth
By Edgar B. Garcia
Whenever I leave my solitary cell, which is no bigger than a parking space, I have to submit to the same dehumanizing process in which officers shackle my ankles and double-cuff my wrists.
As the double set of cold restraints bite into my calloused wrists, I feel a sharp pain shoot through the back of my ankles from the leg irons clamping on. I fight to show no reaction, but my focus is interrupted by the sound of an officer’s voice: “All right, Garcia, step back and turn around.” As the hand griping my upper left arm tightens, I step back, turn, so I can be patted down and then wanded with a metal detector. Escorted by three officers, I make my way down the long hall, as I’ve done for the last seventeen years. It’s the same routine–and the only physical interaction I have with other people, which feeds the deprivation and intensifies my hunger for normality in life.
For decades, I’ve tried to push away the feeling and thought that I may never experience something different when out of the cell or cage. The tense muscles, and the restraint I relate to the sound of keys off in a distance, make me wonder about the heavy toll of solitary confinement on mental and physical health.
I read about a study on physical touch years back. It mentioned that physical touch speaks louder than words. A touch is a sign of acceptance. It gave an example, that even a waitress who touched her clients on the shoulder, increased 33% more on tips than coworkers. I shook my head, and wondered why the touch I feel is more of restraint, control, and couldn’t be further from acceptance. The cold restraints, don’t allow me to feel. The calloused wrist and ankles only remind me of the bizarre measures in place to dehumanize me.
Despite this, I continue to show my worth as man, as a human. I strive for improvement across the board. My achievements both inside and outside these walls are my way of making sense of time and purpose. The BOP can continue to ignore my growth, my worth, but I refuse to descend into the lassitude of the perpetual cycle of self destruction that plagues this environment.
My clear conduct, my superb programming, and the print my creativity has out side these walls have facilitated a voice that rings louder than any label, extreme restraints, BOP conditions could ever muffle.
Lost In Time
By Edgar B. Garcia
Lost in time
forced into an empty environment
with lights that never shined
only blinded by the truth
that surrounds and pulls
hurt and confusion left behind.
After the hands of time
hacked away at my life
a swinging ax in a forest of youth
razing it to the ground.
Only the scars remain
after the traces of time
unraveling the stitches
of precious years wasted–isolated
in an utter gamut of human disposal.
Clemency, a promise of change.
Now voiceless and excluded, drowning on death row,
renders plenty of doubt, and clouds all signs to explore,
the story of my future.
Instead I am struck by the ax and pick–smashed,
by the hands of time,
against the walls that hold me captive.
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