take, leave, po(o)ur

By Anonymous

they take your name, they give you a number. every day you're less and less you. they take everything. down to your essence. they leave you with nothing. when you have nothing left to lose, what's the point? you are forgotten. don't they know it's hard to carry on when no one loves you? don't they see that this place doesn't work? creating and exacerbating the same circumstances that we grew up in, that broke us, that continue to break us, that we learned to survive? and yet we still end up losing. when will someone hold this system accountable? when will they stop pouring money into prisons and pour them into poor schools and poor communities that need them? when will they stop creating harm and expecting change? when will they stop treating retaliation like it's Justice, because that only works when they do it, right? when will they see that the system doesn't work? when there's no more money? but there will always be money for prisons won't there, because there will always be taxpayers... instead of teaching us how to make better choices, they're teaching us how to be controlled. and isn't that really the point of all this? and why, with all the prisons in California, is California not safe yet?