The following is a selection from a forthcoming collection of writing by people incarcerated in Mississippi. It has been edited sparingly for clarity.
CONTENT WARNING: Self-harm.
Prison Through the Holidays
by Anthony Wilson
During the holidays here in prison my mind is a battle field within itself. Worry and stress fills it about loved ones and friends and how they are doing during these holiday times. What they eating and all joy and happiness that fills their hearts and homes. I sit here in a state prison unit in a high-risk lock down zone. All this one-man cell has to offer is 4 solid walls closing in slowly. It is a special tray we get for Thanksgiving.
Turkey, Dressing, Peacan Pie. Good it was. Wait year around for holidays to come just for the special tray we get.
Writing home some few weeks before the holidays I didn’t receive a letter back. Mom never received it by a month later when I called home and video chatted her and my brother so I guess I can’t blame them huh. It just prison during the on and off shifts of the holidays I guess.
It is slow time of year. Especially forthe guys who familyisn’t there anymore.
Those time of year hurts inside. I’m an anti social person who doesn’t trust many people at all any more so their really nobody to talk to about feelings and how stuff bothers me in here. This year the holidays represents a year since my 13-year-old son, 12 at the time tried to commit suicide, the girl I was trying to build a relationship with decided to do some things I wish she would not have allowed to happen, I guess. I’m a better man today after seeing a hidden enemy could prevail and turn away ones who are without ever letting me know reasons or chance for explanation.
Couple months after all these, I laid a razor to my own throat for first time in my life, just ain’t have the heart to end it and admit defeat to lifeand those against me. They may be hard but holding on to me own righteousness thru won my blessings in store.
It’s the first year my oldest brother, whom is handicap, was in a state group home.
After 40 years he had to be taking away for my own sisters greed of money from my [money] who is disabled, living off a disability check each month. Wanting to leach off other people, her own family lost our family the family members.
Christmas is still a couple weeks away and my son won’t even have a conversation with me yet after missing last years birthday plans. He swears I don’t care but love him unconditionally and care more than he will ever know. I have my own so-called members of family of folk to think for this situation. Makes me want to cover up and leave it cause it’s turned in to hurt and destroy its own members and family for the greed of money, lost love & loyalty but I won’t cause some of us have to stand, own its core concepts and beliefs or it will fade away entirely and be nothing any more.
My birthday is right after New Years and I’ll be 33. It’s 2023 and I’m beginning the year sober of 4 months, with goals way higher than I’ve set to achieve myself since being in prison. So even though the holidays are hard on us behind bars, I’ve found resilience in them as milestones of failure that can only lead to a brighter success no one but a few believed I would ever become.
Thru these holidays, I’ll just stay prayed up and depend on our father up high to see me thru the stress and hurt of em.I hope all the people I love and care about in this world are safe, happy and enjoying all the presents and food more than anything. That is what helps me get thru them.
Here in unit 29, the chaplain comes around with a little bag of canteen and hygiene for all the guys in the system for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Today we get our other seasonal commissary pack the commissioner passes out in the system. Most the system now is waiting for the tray we get on Christmas. It’s one the only things we have to look forward to these holidays and milestone of a New Year ahead and the old one dead.
Happy Holidays from Prison By Anthony Wilson
Anthony Wilson is an inmate writer at Mississippi State Penitentiary. “Prison through the Holidays” is an excerpt from Vox’s forthcoming collection, Unit 29: New Writings from Parchman Farm.
Read more about the Prison Writing Initiative:
Mississippi’s Prison Writes Initiative: Changing Lives One Word at a Time – published February, 2019
“Prison Writes Initiative: An Interview with Louis Bourgeois” – published December, 2014
Poetry and Prison – April 15 at The Powerhouse – presented by VOX Press – published April, 2014
