Malik was not surprised to find himself charged and incarcerated as an adult at the DC Jail when he was just 16 years old. “I knew by the choices I…

“Being a better man makes me a better father…I don’t want to let him down. I want to show him what I think a father is—someone who you can trust,…

“From then on, whenever the cell doors closed for the night, I’d start writing. And the crazy thing was, I was in jail, but when I was writing, I felt…

“All that playin’ tag and swingin’ on the swing set? All that just faded away. They call it ‘jumping off the porch.’ In the streets, they didn’t care about my…

“After I learned to read and write poetry with Free Minds, I started to feel confident and I wrote my first poem titled ‘Mommy.’ Writing that poem was very therapeutic…