He dreams of farina & fried eggs,
& he hungers for the secret
of a sentence that doesn't end,
of how to heft his weight
into a job interview & speak
as if the prison walls themselves
aren't filling his lungs with whispers
& wanting-he dreamed all this,
he dreamed a room, a little piece
of a world he owns where there's
a wild echo in the way he stretches
his arms in the middle of this first night,
complaining to himself about the softness
of a mattress he doesn't deserve, &
that he can't make more than a memory
of the rugged thin heap that held up
his body at night when his mind refused.

"The First Night Ahmad Came Home "