Two Years a Ghost: What the State Took, and What I Refuse to Give Back

The Prison Place

4 min read

By the time the state handed me back my name, I had already buried parts of myself I’ll never recover. Two years under state obligation doesn’t just change you—it erodes you. Not all at once, but in slow, grinding increments. Like rust on a chain link fence, it eats through your sense of time, your sense of worth, your sense of belonging. And when you come out, blinking into the daylight, you realize the world kept spinning without you—and it’s not all that eager to let you back on.

Let me be clear: some people do belong in prison. There are those whose actions make them a danger to others, and society has a right to protect itself. But that truth has been twisted into a justification for a system that devours lives wholesale. A system that doesn’t just punish—it profits. That doesn’t just adjudicate condemns. That doesn’t just isolate erases.

According to The Sentencing Project, nearly 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the U.S., and over 5 million are under some form of correctional supervision. Black Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population but account for 37% of the prison population. The Sentencing Project - Wikipedia One in five Black men born in 2001 is likely to be imprisoned at some point in their life. These aren’t just numbers. These are fathers, daughters, sons, neighbors—ghosts in the machine.

And the machine is well-oiled. Private prisons, like those run by GEO Group and Core Civic, have been found to house disproportionately higher numbers of Black and Brown bodies. GEO Group - Wikipedia Why? Because profit margins favor the young, the healthy, and the voiceless. Because contracts demand occupancy quotas. Because in America, incarceration is not just a punishment—it’s a business model.

Inside, I met men who hadn’t seen their children in years. Men who were denied medication because it was too expensive. Men who were transferred like cattle to meet bed quotas. I met a man who taught himself law just to shave five years off his sentence. I met another who hadn’t touched grass in over a decade. And I met myself—stripped bare, forced to reckon with who I was when no one was watching, writing my first published novel, “Of Fury and Faith.” amazon.com/

But the punishment doesn’t end at the gate. Once released, we carry the mark. In many states, we’re denied the right to vote unless we navigate a bureaucratic maze that costs time, money, and dignity. This is taxation without representation in its rawest form. A democracy that silences millions of its citizens is not a democracy—it’s a gated community with a flag.

And let’s not pretend this is accidental. The roots of this system trace back to the Black Codes, to convict leasing, to Jim Crow. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery—except as punishment for a crime. That loophole has been stretched into a noose. The rot isn’t just in the system. It’s in the soil. It’s in the groin, the underbelly, the crack and butt of a nation that dares call itself exceptional while warehousing its own people.

We’ve lost so much. The fire of Harriet Tubman. The brilliance of Benjamin Banneker. The moral courage of Hugh Thompson Jr. at My Lai. The radical clarity of Thomas Paine. We’ve traded them for three-strikes laws, mandatory minimums, and for-profit punishment. We’ve forgotten that justice without humanity is just vengeance in a suit.

But I remember. And I write because remembering is resistance. Because Sankofa’s Song tells us to go back and remember what was lost. Because if we don’t tell these stories—raw, unvarnished, and unapologetic—then the silence will finish what the sentence started.

I am not who I was before those two years. But I am not who they wanted me to become either. I am still here. Still writing. Still fighting. And I will not be erased. One in five Black men born in 2001 is likely to be imprisoned at some point in their life. These aren’t just numbers. These are fathers, daughters, sons, neighbors—ghosts in the machine.

And the machine is well-oiled. Private prisons, like those run by GEO Group and Core Civic, have been found to house disproportionately higher numbers of Black and Brown bodies. Why? Because profit margins favor the young, the healthy, and the voiceless. Because contracts demand occupancy quotas. Because in America, incarceration is not just a punishment—it’s a business model.

Inside, I met men who hadn’t seen their children in years. Men who were denied medication because it was too expensive. Men who were transferred like cattle to meet bed quotas. I met a man who taught himself law just to shave five years off his sentence. I met another who hadn’t touched grass in over a decade. And I met myself—stripped bare, forced to reckon with who I was when no one was watching, writing my first published novel, “Of Fury and Faith.” amazon.com/

But the punishment doesn’t end at the gate. Once released, we carry the mark. In many states, we’re denied the right to vote unless we navigate a bureaucratic maze that costs time, money, and dignity. This is taxation without representation in its rawest form. A democracy that silences millions of its citizens is not a democracy—it’s a gated community with a flag.

And let’s not pretend this is accidental. The roots of this system trace back to the Black Codes, to convict leasing, to Jim Crow. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery—except as punishment for a crime. That loophole has been stretched into a noose. The rot isn’t just in the system. It’s in the soil. It’s in the groin, the underbelly, the crack and butt of a nation that dares call itself exceptional while warehousing its own people.

We’ve lost so much. The fire of Harriet Tubman. The brilliance of Benjamin Banneker. The moral courage of Hugh Thompson Jr. at My Lai. The radical clarity of Thomas Paine. We’ve traded them for three-strikes laws, mandatory minimums, and for-profit punishment. We’ve forgotten that justice without humanity is just vengeance in a suit.

But I remember. And I write because remembering is resistance. Because Sankofa’s Song tells us to go back and remember what was lost. Because if we don’t tell these stories—raw, unvarnished, and unapologetic—then the silence will finish what the sentence started.

I am not who I was before those two years. But I am not who they wanted me to become either. I am still here. Still writing. Still fighting. And I will not be erased.