O:JA&L Mixed Forms
Zoé Mahfouz
ASD AND PARADISE
The cameras make me nervous. The sound engineer is taking too long to mic the prisoner. My body sways in the chair. It is not my chair. It does not feel like any chair I know. Was that crack on the floor here when we arrived? Knock, knock, knock on wood.
The prisoner tells me about his days. The rigid routine. What is the rigid routine? Waking at 6 AM. Standing. Being counted. Counted in a straight line. Straight. Every second accounted for. I must make note of the crack.
He speaks of chores. Repetitive chores. Stacking crates. I like stacking crates. And collecting them. I classify by color, by size, by use.
He says he wants to be with his family. You cannot stack your family. Family is loud. It is too many voices. Too many limbs. Too much movement, everywhere.
The lunch schedule keeps changing. Change is upsetting. I am clenching. I am clenching the crack.
No human contact
Identical bed, shoes, breath—
Becoming the cell.
About the writer :
Zoé Mahfouz is a multi-talented French artist: an award-winning bilingual actress trained at the Actors Studio, a screenwriter with a Master’s degree from the London Film School, a content creator with over 3 million views online, and a writer whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her writing has appeared in over sixty literary magazines and best-of anthologies worldwide.
Image: Out of the Hole (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. Proprietary image. 2025.
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