Sorrow For Syllables

I carried silence like a sentence
long before the judge stamped years across my chest.

But silence was never my native tongue—

I spoke in scribbles,

in broken pencils on scraps of paper,

in words that shook like my hands but still stood taller than the walls.

Even in prison I wasn’t quiet.

I wrote for women craving zu-zu’s and wham-whams,

but what they were starving for

was laughter.

So I smuggled joy in jokes,

hid giggles inside commissary lists,

slipped punchlines under cell doors like contraband.

Because pain echoes loud in concrete chambers,

and the only way to drown it

is to hum the heart with joy.

Laughter chased the shadows down the hallway,

made the guards wonder what we were plotting—

as if happiness itself was a crime.

Writing freed me from the haunt of thoughts,

from memories circling like predators.

Every poem was a fist turned into an open hand,

every line a prayer that didn’t ask permission.

I bent. I cracked.

But I did not shatter.

I traded sorrow for syllables,

barbed wire for belly laughs,

cell walls for stories that breathed.

And when the women laughed—

God, when they laughed—

the room filled with something freer than freedom,

something stronger than survival.

This is what writing does,

it turns pain into rhythm,

into rebellion,

into joy no prison can contain.

Image: Ai