Notations of The Incarcerated

Men do not lift their feet while taking steps. The gummy soles of standard issued shoes inconsistently slide across glazed concrete floors in a motion appropriately titled the "convict shuffle." The hallways and common areas lay motionless with trails of digression criss-crossing through the still, grey, mass. Mountain goats and grazing cattle come to mind with the vacant trails they dissect the plains and hill sides amongst us, and not.

Below each chair, each stool and every toilet, the gloss cement lays flat and matted. The separation between polished and not creates depth similar to that of the indented earth beneath the seat of a child’s swing set. Back and forth the feet drag, digging deeper into nothing.

Prison walls. Someone has been here. I don't know whom, but life has existed here before I. They have tried to mask it, to paint over it and to sanitize it, but someone has been here. Blinding is the only way to convey how these walls penetrate me. Compact, tight, thick, impenetrable structure, layered upon itself exponentially. Lifeless as a corpse, they stand, devoid of inspiration, yet their very being confirms the existence of life within.

I found a chip, a divot, I found an imperfection. It has depth. The chip is artificial. Someone created this, this chip, and it breaks the stale monotony of these cold walls resurrected by even colder machines. As the sun sits at a lower level in the autumn and winter persuading our eyes to constantly squint, compelling you to disdain the object that once protected and warmed you; is as the florescent light ricochets off infirmary colored masses piercing migraine cavities and elicits repulsion as the only response. I fear the chip. Its pain if far to great for me to understand.

Often, the amenities are overlooked, and rightly so. They are valueless; they hold no purpose beyond their existence if existence is based solely on filling a void. Sterile they sit, staring blankly at the one who will use them out of desperation, only after having explored the scourge of self-control and the surplus of need. Amorphous, void of any line resembling the composition of its uncommitted counterpart. To the touch these items of convenience, of comfort, feel indisposed and infected. They burn with their antiseptic sting as the bones and joints and muscles ache as the body feverishly quivers. In these moments of utter discomfort I am coerced into acknowledging the adjacent abominations, but I do not recognize them, I rarely see them.

From behind my eyelids I watch the ceiling, the cap, radiate and pulse under the false pretenses of a beating heart. It is the force that pushes me down, it squishes me under the auspices of scornful wishes and I lay here flat. I do not inhale. The ceiling is stained in a pink hue thrown from the four-foot light bulbs covered in dust and webs and skin, which imitate life under hardened exteriors. They want me to fantasize of hope. THEY want ME to yearn for the touch of humanity. Everyday is a war of submission and survival, every night the cloak that masks the face of evil, the selfish desire of domination. The spoiled pink top is incapable of giving me hope. The decrepit color is but the purple lips protruding from a lifeless body.

This is not the end.