Death or rebirth?
drawing from my prison journal
One
dead leaf
curled and brown
One single leaf
drifting down
Does it signify
death
or rebirth?
Time passes
the tree blooms green
One lost soul
brown and curled
finds hope and
on the world
unfurls
one new soul…
For more Poems from Prison, check out the book in our Fierce Grace Marketplace.
There are thirteen journals in a box beside my desk—some stitched together from scraps and folded paper, bound with thread in a prison craft class, covered with greeting cards glued into place like armor.
They are makeshift. Mismatched. Sacred.
Alongside them rests my prison Bible, worn and soft, with my name and inmate number handwritten on its spine. These two—my journals and my Bible—are the most treasured things I own.
Inside those pages, I cracked open.
~ Toby
