Patience is...

Patience is being woken up at 3:30 in the morning, getting handcuffed and waist-chained, being herded onto a bus, heading toward the uncertainties of the immigration court, sitting in a holding tank with 25 stressed out immigration detainees who are waiting for the judges to decide their fate, eating 2 peanut butter sandwiches, 1 half-ounce bag of potato chips, & an apple for breakfast, a baloney sandwich, 6 sliced carrot sticks, 4 pretzels, & a bottled water for lunch, smelling the urine and feces as detainees walk over sleeping bodies to use the toilet, watching detainees hang their heads with deportation papers in their hands, envying the ones who receive bail, taking in the beauty of San Francisco's sunrise and sunset through wired and dusty windows, realizing freedom is so close yet a miracle away, allowing ICE agents to cop a feel before being chained up again for transportation, waiting 2 hours with handcuffs, waist-chain, and shackles digging into the flesh before getting on a bus, riding with the heater turned up high for nearly 2 hours in the summer heat before the driver notices his mistake only after hearing loud bangs and cries for air, being confined to hard plastic chairs for 3 hours while the yelling of foreign languages supersede the roaring engine and tires tearing up the road, letting the jail deputy violate my body with his hands, receiving what was given for breakfast as dinner, then finally with butt sore, body dehydrated, and physically and mentally drained, at 10:35pm concrete and steel await my constitution - yet still believing that there is a better tomorrow.