“The knife of my mind" by Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance

"The knife of my mind

I have no present.

I have only a past

and, perhaps, a future.

The present has been taken from me.

I'm left in an empty space whose darkness

I carve at with the knife of my mind.

I must carve myself anew

out of the razor-wire nothingness.

I will know the ecstasy

and the pain

of freedom.

I will be ordinary again.

Yes, ordinary,

that terrifying condition,

where all is possibility,

where the present exists and must be faced.”

-Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance

I so relate to this, not because I've been wrongfully imprisoned, but because I'm a prisoner in a broken body, and my bars, are my own soul crushing grief. -VLH