It’s hard for a “free folks” (as our loved ones like to call them) to understand the prison wife world. Why we wait? What is life like being with someone in prison where everything is monitored (emails, calls, visits, etc.)? All the roadblocks, emotions, and odds stacked against a prison wife on a daily basis, and not to mention: the stigma. The stigma of being a prison wife is something that haunts us everyday. From the super market, to the bars and restaurants we go out to, being a prison wife makes us look like we are “desperate”, “have little to no self-esteem,” or we are “ugly” and “unintelligent.” Well I can promise you most of us are far from it. We love our men with a crazy, firey fierceness that rivals that of an alpha she-wolf. Where others break down from weakness, there is a fire in our eyes that makes us stand tall and take any and all hits and obstacles throw our way.
One amazing author bringing the prison wife world to the forefront is Nicole Richardson. Her journey from before and during incarceration encapsulates every single emotion a prison wife may face. She was brave and vulnerable enough to put her feelings into words and poems, just like a master artist would put brush strokes to a canvas. I applaud her courage and I can’t thank her enough for putting all her poems together in an E-book called Broken Silence. She even went a step further and wrote a poem specifically for me and M. I read M one of my favorite poems by her titled “Forever” this past Valentine’s Day and I recorded it for her. She loved the phrase that we use, “You’re the other half of my sky,” that we stole from the first book we ever read together as a couple, The Light Between Oceans. Below, you will find her poem for M and I, a preview of her book, and a link to Amazon where you can purchase the book online. She is a master, whose words have touched thousands of souls across this country and even abroad. Thank you Nicole, for shattering the stigma with the hopes to educate the masses of what it’s like to live everyday as a prison wife.
For Angela
Have you ever woken up early and watched the sunrise
Have you ever fed your eyes
With the most glorious beauty in all of creation
Has your heart ever lept with the revelation
That this beauty, this perspective, this point of view
Has only been revealed to you
Because that is your sky
That is your stroke of light
Breaking through the dark quiet of the night
And is filling your senses
With the relentless
Caresses
Of pinks and orange and golden hues
Has beauty like that ever emboldened you
To take on another day anew
Like you had never seen the ugly that’s in this world?
Have you ever watched a storm unfurl
And basked in the glory of its magnificence
Have you ever sat in wonder at the brilliance
Of the lightning lighting up the night in a flash
There for a second, then gone that fast?
Have you ever watched the clouds give chase
To each other as they race
Across the vast expanse of the atmosphere
Have you ever thought that you could maybe hear
Their wispy laughter being carried on the breeze
Have you ever been brought to your knees
With the conviction that there must be some higher power
Because every day, every hour
Could not be painted so masterfully across the canvas
It can’t all be left to chance
Or circumstance
The stars bright, the clouds white, the skies blue.
That’s the beauty I see when I look at you
You are the sun rising in my east and setting in my west
You are the glow from the moon at night singing me to rest
In the comfort of the presence
Of your mere existence
In the universe.
No choirs song, no poets verse
Could ever be able to fully convey
The colors, the joys you bring to my every day
Just because you are in my life
Like the sun is to the moon like husband is to wife
I only reflect the brilliant splendor of your shine
How blessed that the brightest star in the sky is mine
No, not the brightest star
That is far
Too small a comparison
You are all I see and even past the horizon
You are my sky.
You are my reason why
To keep living
You keep giving
Me more love, more beauty with every earth’s rotation
You are the jubilation
Of the morning bird’s song
You are the long
Awaited sunrise at the end of the longest nights
Of my life.
I need no earthly stone to be certain
For your love shines brighter than the diamonds on the velvet curtain
In which they are set
In their facets
On the golden rings of saturn and the universe in orbit
I gladly forfeit
My heart to be pulled to revolve around whatever space
This cosmos places
You.
You are my sky blue
My cleansing fall of rain
The northstar that remains
Constant in the ever changes chaos from day to day
You are every golden ray
Of sunshine
That warms me from the winters cold.
The strong comforting hold
In your arms
Carries me like the charms
Of a flowers scent in the fullness of spring
You, my darling are the most beautiful thing that I know.
You glow
With the radiance of every celestial light
But you are too bright
You are too perfect for the world to contain
You cannot remain
Confined to the imperfect confines of this world
That is only jealous of your splendor
One day I will only be able to remember
Your beauty in photographs
The warm summer winds of your laughter
Can only be replayed in recordings where I captured
It’s glorious sound
Like a thundercloud
Rumbling to sky from ground
To show its power
One heartbreaking hour
I will sit
Watching my sun set for the final time
I will reach out to feel your final rays of warmth on my skin
As the clouds begin
To overtake you in their darkness
As you take your final bow and rest
In the shadows of the night
My eyes clouded, strain to see the final sight
Of your light
As it casts its multicolored streaks
Above and through the mountain peaks
That we couldn’t climb
At the closing of our time
I am convinced that I’m
More loved, more blessed with the revelation
Of joy than any other woman since the dawn of creation
Has ever known
For you have shown me
Colors not yet labeled on the spectrum
You’ve sung me to sleep with the hum
Of lullabies from the wind escaping the doldrums
Of my life before you
The sky will never be as blue
Will never have hues so bright in my eyes
After my sky
Has been taken back to his own
Where still our love will be shown
Because it is a power that cannot be harnessed
For you will be the star shining brightest in the darkness of the night
Such as you are the light
In this darkened world
For which you my love, are far too wonderful
