An intimate first person non-fiction storytelling experience about incarceration in the United States.
Forward By Christopher
I pause a moment to take in those around me. Old souls whose faces carry deep lines etched by the hand of time. Within this sea of humans are the young and agile moving about without a care or a worry, their sentence a mere inconvenience in their lives.
Most of the time it’s the young crowd that gets to go home. Released through the ever spinning door of incarceration, but truly not free. They will return. Back as a statistic for time has wizened me to this fact.
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FORWARD to Quimby piece below
I remember a fellow, slender of build and young in years, who was new to the chaos of prison life. I watched him from a distance for I knew that he was at a perilous moment in his life. Transitioning from the free world to this world of concrete and iron is akin to skydiving without instruction. You find the rip cord and survive or you plummet to the earth.
Continue reading “Response to suicidal behavior in Ohio prisons”
A month has passed since my parole hearing and life is slowly returning to normal. I tap away at the soft rubber keyboard as I sit here typing at the same table I have for years. It has become my “office”. The guys know I’m writing–what exactly, few know–but that I do it daily.I’m in the dayroom and it’s loud. As abnormal as it may seem, I find the noise level comforting because it tells me all is well. Guys slapping dominoes on thick tables and animated card games make up this cacophony of prison life. Behind these pale cinder brick walls the abnormal becomes a new normal.