POETRY AS HEALING by Maya Williams

This Tuesday afternoon, Zee has been out of SEG (or “Administrative Segregation”) for two days as she’s joining our writing circle. This hasn’t been her first time, and it unfortunately won’t be her last. She has been placed there for responding to transphobic verbal assaults from residents and correctional officers. She has been placed there for refusing to follow the dress code at Maine Correctional Center by making her shirt more tight and feminine presenting. The reason she has been placed there the most was, “for the protection of her mental health” even though it only made her mental health worse each time. There is legislation in the state of Maine that prohibits the use of solitary confinement for transgender incarcerated folks, but because administrators found a loophole to call it “SEG,” they often get away with it.

She is not alone in shifting in hard blue-gray seats in the classroom.

She is not alone in smelling the Lipton tea one of her fellow residents heated on their way here.

The prompt given in the writing circle is What keeps you here? Zee jokes that it’s because her sentence of longevity at Maine Correctional Center tells her to. I acknowledge that if humor helps her get through the piece, feel free to use it.

For once, she is not alone with fellow residents of marginalized genders who feel, through their words on the black and white notebook pages provided for them, they can finally have time to express how they’re really feeling. Not the spare amount of feelings they tell their case manager. Not the zero amount of feelings they tell a correctional officer. Their full true feelings after sitting with themselves, writing in response to a prompt interrogating the space in and out of their bodies, and making sure they read the words aloud; who knows when they’ll feel safe enough to speak them into existence again?

I have not experienced incarceration, but as someone who has experienced the consequences of lack of effective mental health treatment as a trans person like Zee and others like her, I know that being alive in our bodies is difficult. Having to choose to wake up every day and be alive is difficult. This is not to say we’re entirely incapable of finding joy, and this is not to reduce our identities to our struggles. But when we are constantly facing death from a system’s punitiveness connecting back to carceral facilities whether inside or not, it’s difficult to find outlets of honest free expression of the full self.

The prompt given in the writing circle is What keeps you here? Zee jokes that it’s because her sentence of longevity at Maine Correctional Center tells her to. I acknowledge that if humor helps her get through the piece, feel free to use it. I also acknowledge that I’m curious about what keeps them waking up in the morning? What keeps them remaining in their bodies that face grief, loss, and physical pain? What could keep you here in a way that is more earnest and celebratory?

Some residents are called “lifers” for either staying from young adulthood to elder adulthood or for simply being there until their death. Because poetry is a tool that makes surviving in a place like that a little more bearable, I want to keep coming.

When it is Zee’s turn to share, she shares that what keeps her here is the hope that she will feel comfortable and safe enough to wear make-up upon release. She shares that she wants to see her hair grow longer. She shares that she wants to encourage fellow trans people to stick around too. Some clap the second she stops reading. Some stomp their feet. One person gets up to hug her and says, “I’m so proud of you.” Zee rubs her friend’s short buzzcut in response as a thank you to him. Physical contact is not encouraged among the residents, but I refuse to stop something so natural, genuine, and likely a form of affection that hasn’t been given or received in a while.

As the residents return to their blocks, the Lipton tea smell is gone, the chairs are empty, and I’m left by myself.

I don’t enjoy going into a facility historically and presently designed to destroy my Blackness, my transness, my whole personhood. At the same time, I get to return home every day, while the rest of the class remains in this facility. Some residents are called “lifers” for either staying from young adulthood to elder adulthood or for simply being there until their death. Because poetry is a tool that makes surviving in a place like that a little more bearable, I want to keep coming. Every time I renew my training, administrators emphasize their desire to keep volunteers safe at the correctional center. But it’s never admin or correctional officers who make me feel safe. It’s the residents who are exhausted by punishment from staff that doesn’t help their healing. It’s the residents who are making their own rites of passage towards healing through the power of their words.