still so cold

This was written from my prison cell in the winter of 2017.

A long, long time ago deep in the frozen underbelly of the Clarksburg County Jail, I looked down at my wrist and examined the plastic bracelet secured around it. The bracelet was a human-sized version of the sort of tag that naturalists and pet-stores use to track animals.

Snapped on with a thick metal fastener and listing my institutional biography, it was a surreal reminder that I was now and would forever be Property of the State – that was the phrase the detective had used as I hugged my Dad good-bye after turning myself in within the same room I’d given my canary-inspired confession. And fingering that plastic ID tag and looking out the tiny window of my cell I saw the same theme then as I do looking up from my desk now: Cold sodium lights casting a steady glint off the concertina wire which tops impossibly high perpendicular chainlink fences, running lines out to forever through a soft dusting of snow. Nothing moving, nothing changing.

Then as now, I’m starting to get truly cold alone in my prison cell.

Back in that tiny suicide-prevention cell, outfitted only with a five-foot plastic cradle that held my almost insubstantial synthetic mattress - the only thing at all breaking up that cell’s emptiness other than the ubiquitous prison-issue metallic toilet-sink combo - I remember stuffing toilet-paper into my prison-issue jumpsuit for insulation and desperately wishing for a way to escape what my life had become, as the chill fought its way up through the soles of my feet and I stared desperately out the narrow winter window.