POETRY: “Exist Me”
By Rachael C. Hilyard, Topeka Correctional Facility
Rachael C. Hilyard is a writer currently incarcerated at Topeka Correctional Facility. In 2003, when she was 21, she was hit by a drunk driver in a terrible car accident that left her in a coma for 12 days. After the accident, she had to relearn how to read, write, and everything else. She is currently appealing for a more reasonable sentence after getting 50 years to life as the result of a trial in which she was manipulated and taken advantage of.
Rachael asks that anyone interested in hearing more about her story write to her at:
Rachael Hilyard #0124414
T.C.F.
815 SE Rice Rd
Topeka, KS 66607
While the smile covers your face
we see through to the
dark shadows clouding your eyes.
Am I looking in the mirror?
Surely I am not
I don’t smile much anymore.
You don’t fool me, we
don’t know how transparent
our true feelings are.
What are we? But light,
and fragments of energy,
stuck together here.
Them, They, You, and I
let’s all…just please
open our eyes…Try to see
A choreography
in this organized chaos that’s life.
And just breathe…now
SMASH
pins, needles, and glass.
TRAPPED circles, Trapped Stars,
Iron lattice on windows and bars,
rods, cones, fractals, and color pixels
electrons, quarks, and photons
molecules, atoms, particle physics
GRAVITY
-IT-
HOLDS US DOWN
all this
makes us up—we wake up
In the end
I am a cipher
but for now
I EXIST.