Punching the Air

by Ibi Zoboi

like everything that I am, that I’ve ever been counts as being guilty

The suit I was supposed to wear to prom, to my cousin’s graduation to mosque with Umi is the suit I wear to my first trial

But that gray didn’t make me any less black My white lawyer didn’t make me any less black

Their words and what they thought to be their truth were like a scalpel shaping me into the monster they want me to be

And maybe my whole soul my whole life will be like a mirror And instead of me here in this courtroom it would be the People versus the People

Umi always said, Somebody hit you, you hit ’em back That was the rule of that game

It was about courts, turf, space Me and them other boys were just trying to go home

There’s a stone in my throat There’s a brick on my chest The stone turns into a mountain The brick turns into a building

I want so bad to paint this picture to crop out all the noise and zoom in on the people who love me

her face looked like it was slowly slowly turning intohoney falling off a spoon Sadness moved down from her forehead to her lips Drooping and dripping

My life, my whole damn life before that courtroom before that trial before that night was like Africa And this door leads to a slave ship And maybe jailmaybe jail isis America

They’re clownin’ me for being asleep when the worldthe whole world has peeled back our eyelids and robbed us of any peaceful rest

I overflow I can’t hold it in I won’t hold them in my rhymes my words my truth are like a tsunami

Maybe this is what drowning is like wet (blood & tears) covering whatever is left of my face And inside that giant gray building the juvenile detention facility— with its bright shining lights is the bottom of the ocean I won’t be able to breathe down there

everything in here is attached to a fucking wall and I wonder how long it’ll be before I’m attached to the walls, too

The pen and pencil are my thoughts and memories The paper is my soul

Every day I lose my mind Every fucking day But you know what? I find it again That’s the thing about being locked up Whatever you lose you’ll find it again over and over

Here the darkest night is my canvas I paint the past in broad strokes, bright hues And the memories dance all over my mind in living color

I paint in words and voices, rhymes and rhythm and every whisper, every conversation beats a drum in my mind at full blast

We try to forget something throw it away but we can always dig it back up when we’re ready because it’s still heretrapped just like us

The home that I’ve known all my life was squeezing in around me forcing me to be small, small when all I was doing was growing tall Growing too wide for all the boxes around me

They can’t lock down your mind, Amal— only if you let them Your mind is free Your thoughts are free Your creativity is free—