There Are No Monsters: A Poem for the Women in Solitary Confinement by Kwaneta Harris
It’s no need for the hole.
Ms. Josie’s fingernails trace maps across her arms,
blood blooming like protest signs she cannot carry.
Give her laundry duty, white socks paired with purpose,
towels folded into squares of order.
Her hands know how to work,
they just forgot they could build instead of destroy.
Watch her sort colors from whites,
watch her hands remember they were made for more than pain.
It’s no need for the hole.
Kay Kay don’t speak their language of compliance,
her autism a country they refuse to learn.
She wants grass beneath her body,
sky above her wandering mind.
Let her wear the wristband that explains
what their training never taught them.
Feed her outside where the earth makes sense,
where following orders matters less than following birds.
It’s no need for the hole.
Monique hears helicopters we cannot hear,
phantom blades slicing through her sanity.
She runs to her blanket like it’s a bunker,
screams into fabric that cannot hold her.
What if we said: Call us when they come.
What if we said: Your fear is real even when the choppers ain’t.
What if someone held her hand
and stayed until the sky went quiet in her mind?
It’s no need for the hole.
Janey knows what we don’t want to know:
they take everything you wash away.
So she keeps her strength, keeps her smell,
keeps whatever piece of herself she can hold onto.
But we have coaxed women into water before,
stood outside shower stalls speaking soft,
reminding them that clean don’t mean erased,
that soap and solidarity can live in the same room.
It’s no need for the hole.
They call it staff assault when a woman swings back,
but who assaulted who first?
Who put hands on her before she learned her body was a weapon she could use?
The files don’t show the grip marks on her arms,
the words that corner softer than any cell.
They make her the monster
so they don’t have to name the beast that wears a badge.
It’s no need for the hole.
I been here almost nine years in this tomb,
and I ain’t met one woman who belonged in solitary.
Not one monster. Not one demon. Not one lost cause.
The policymakers dream up creatures that don’t exist,
write legislation for their nightmares,
lock us away from their imagination’s failures.
But I know what we need:
overdose us with nature, with animals who don’t judge.
Forest baths until our lungs remember green,
puppies and kittens until our hands remember gentle,
sun on our faces until our skin recalls it was meant to feel.
It’s no need for the hole.
There never was.
Just women the world gave up on
before it even tried.
Just women who needed laundry rooms and grass and hands to hold,
who needed someone to say: I see you. I stay.
The hole is a failure of imagination,
a giving up dressed up as policy.
Close it down and give us what we always needed:
each other, the earth, and a chance to remember
we were never monsters at all.
"Kwaneta Harris is a former nurse, business owner, and expat, now an incarcerated journalist. In her writing, she illuminates how the experience of being incarcerated in the largest state prison in Texas is vastly different for women in ways that directly map onto a culture rooted in misogyny. Her stories expose how the intersection of gender, race, and place contribute to state-sanctioned, gender-based violence. "
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