Like the others, her thoughts are a graffiti
of spontaneous phrases & lines.
Four walls of clipped & looped words
left by hands in haste. One door, no
windows, the only light a hanging bare bulb.
I’m in hell
help me
Above this reads
One word in a hand
is worth more than
six behind sealed lips.
To fall asleep she beats her head
into the stripped mattress, ignoring
the stench of stale urine & bile.
The light stays on for the camera
mounted in the corner. When she pees
in the floor hole, changes her sweat-soaked
tee, gets off to fill the static silence,
they are watching. She tries to forget this
but her feelings fall like rain, overwhelm
like runoff water rushing past clogged
gutters, rage through restless nights,
settle at her feet in stagnant pools
with nowhere to go. She’s ready to write.
There is no hell
like this room in my head
no light enough
to lead the way out
Jenifer DeBellis, M.F.A., is author of New Wilderness (Cornerstone Press, 2023), Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free (Library Tales Publishing, 2021), and Blood Sisters (Main Street Rag, 2018). She edits Pink Panther Magazine and directs aRIFT Warrior Project and Detroit Writers’ Guild (501c3). She’s featured in Psychology Today and Seattle’s My Independence Report and her writing appears in CALYX, the Good Men Project, Medical Literary Messenger, Solstice, and other fine journals. A former Meadow Brook Writing Project fellow, JDB facilitates summer workshops for Oakland University and teaches for Saginaw Valley State University.
