A Letter to the Outside

By Katelin Farnsworth (Australia)

 

You bang on about feelings,
as if you could have any.

I want you to know that the gentleman

in the long white coat is here again,

and everything you said sits on my skin,
ugly mulberry bruises that ache.

The glass in here loosens itself

in small window frames.

I am forever tracing the dust with my fingers,

imagining that somewhere, another version of me

is circling the skies, saying beautiful things.

Remember those dirty eggs you brought in?

They were the same colour as your eyes.
but what would I do with eggs?
Really, I don’t need your eyes.

Oh, here we go again.
I’d know that slack mouth anywhere.
Please put your tongue away. I don’t want

to see it smack against the front of your teeth.

I don’t feel like hearing your apology
and I’m not going to read your letter.

Don’t write back.

 

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A Letter to the Outside won second prize in the African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013.

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