Friday, May 29, 2009

Prison Bars and Pastoral Scenes

Each morning is the same. The contents of it never strays from a routine set in place by years and years of disarming and disturbing dialogue. The result, a hard and broken person, so lost in their own tragedies they can't find the energy to stumble into the light. So he lays on the lumpy and long mattress, arms folded behind his head, legs crossed. He's been awake for mere moments. The sound of sins and the feeling of damp, cold walls never goes away - not even in his dreams. There is no sight of the rats, as usual, but he can hear them hustling across the crossbeams ahead. He thinks on their lives. The rat here has more freedom than he. They're in the same prison but they don't know it. He thinks on his life. He knows were he is. Prison walls have a way of letting that be known immediately.

He will rise in 18 minutes, his door will be unlocked and he will head with the masses to food. Eighteen minutes is a long time when all you're thinking about is darkness. And worse yet, the light you can see through the darkness but seem to never reach. He's hardly responsible for what got him here. It was self-defense. All those unforgiving years of conditions and merits as a way to worth. How was he supposed to know he didn't have to kill to earn...respect, love, admiration? He didn't even have to hurt. It was all a ruse. He almost knows that now. He knows it best when he sees outside the lines - past the fences, barbed wire and guards. The obstacles abound, but only from getting there. His view is not obstructed. He can paint that bucolic scene in a minute when it's dark and he's curled on the molded noisy mattress. Sprawling hills, all shades of green that sprout old, commanding trees with trunks just made for leaning and boughs just made for shade. Wildflowers scatter the busy lines of grass with no order. Purple Coneflower on the left and a few past the oak. Ox-Eyed Daisies abundantly spread from side to side and front to back of these wild, uncultivated grounds. Blue flax waits patiently at the feet of an unruly Alpine Currant.

That day, though, where he asks the boughs for cover may never come. The cold bar that sticks to his cheek as he squeezes much of his face through to the outside serves as a constant reminder of his whereabouts. And while he can see outside, the colors and variety of life, he's not convinced he doesn't deserve these unsightly walls, cold confines and rough, unrewarding relationships - if you can call them such. Perhaps the austere conditions are just what he bargained for.

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