Morning In Prison
She awakes, reluctantly, to another day, feeling betrayed by the fleeting freedom of last night's dreams. She has not yet opened her eyes, and already the
weight of reality is pressing down on her, making it hard for her to breathe, like the thick and heavy air of a hot, clammy afternoon. With a weary sigh she
opens her eyes, throws off her covers, and sits up in bed, hugging her knees to her chest and staring off into nothing.
The door to her cell is open, creating a momentary sense of liberation, which no longer tempts the prisoner. She knows that somewhere out there, far beyond
that deceitful door, are impassable walls, topped with razors, guarded by guns, that keep her captive.
All of the years left in her sentence stretch out in her imagination, a dull and featureless desert with no signs of life. The suffocating emptiness of the
impending day fills her heart until she feels like it will be torn in two. She thinks about what she will do with this day, and decides that maybe she will
try suicide again. It would be her third time.
Tears start to fall, leading quickly to fits of uncontrollable sobbing, as she squeezes her eyes closed against the aching in her chest. Then she is filled
with a terrible rage at the absurdity and injustice of it all. And in an instant the anger turns back into despair so powerful that it causes her physical
pain.
She thinks of that wonderful, sweet, sensitive man whose embrace once made her feel… things that she cannot put into words. She asks herself what was so
terribly criminal about those things that they did with each other on that one magical night when he gave her a gift that her heart holds truly precious.
She remembers how he hesitated when she told him what she wanted from him, how he asked her if she would mind waiting, and how she had persisted.
As always, these thoughts turn into a tempest of conflicting emotions, from guilt to gratitude to anger to sadness, and grief and confusion and frustration,
all overshadowed by the echo of their affection.
Then comes the memory of her parents finding the two of them together, and those horrible men in uniform taking her friend away from her. And then there was
the screaming, the crying, and the desperate pleading, and those futile attempts to have a rational conversation about how much their actions were hurting
her, which all fell upon deaf ears.
She collapses back down on her bed, tortured by the sick feeling that she can do nothing to free someone she loves very much from the cage in which he is
imprisoned. Or to free herself from being locked outside of that cage, in a prison with walls as wide as the horizon, which to the child feels no larger
than a coffin.
