MASSIVE CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR TRANSPHOBIA, RAPE, VIOLENCE, INCARCERATION, DEATH
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Inspired by this impossibly brave woman.
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How do you survive
In a place of forced bargains? Of heads they win, tails you lose?
You strike what you can, pretend for a second
Some choice in the matter is yours
You’ll pay for safety from violence
With something.
You say to yourself you allowed
You’ll pay in installments.
They’ll come to collect
Every hour, every day
Don’t you fret
It’s better to be forced to pay
Than to die of your debt.
How do you stay alive
In a space where you’re not
Where the person they put behind bars
Isn’t you?
Well you’ve nowhere to go
So you walk in the skin of the man
You thought you had left long ago.
And his hair starts to grow
Through your face. And the pain
That used to be his begins throbbing again.
And they’re calling you all the old names.
But it’s better to hide, than to know
You’ll never be you again.
How do you escape
From a life where you’re barely alive
Where the penance for trying to survive
Is more torture, more violent crime?
When each barbed wire fence that you climb,
Each daring and dangerous break
Means it only gets worse the next time?
How do you rehabilitate
When whatever your crime
In the end, a merciful sentence of death
Which they dressed up as a choice
Is the only, the only release?
Tom Juniper Poetry 