Shortly after 3 pm on April 8, I donned my sunglasses and stood in the center of the prison yard. I watched as the coal-black lunar disc slowly smothered the sun. All around me I heard prisoners clapping and cheering. I removed the glasses, as it was safe to look at the total eclipse.

What I saw left me breathless.

Staring at the sky, I remembered the solar eclipse of Feb. 26, 1979, when I was 7. My father had helped me make an eclipse viewer: a cardboard box with a pinhole punched through it and a sheet of white paper glued inside.

Aimed skyward, our contraption held a perfect black-and-white image of the eclipse, a partial eclipse from our point in its path. I was moved by my father’s ingenuity to capture the moon and the sun together in a box.

The 2024 eclipse experience left some residents of my prison stunned. Todd Sodders said the eclipse left him feeling “wonder and awe juxtaposed with one’s insignificance.”

“It was surreal,” Oscar Santiago said.

The moment the total eclipse blackened the clear blue sky, an eerie 360-degree twilight gripped the mid-afternoon and triggered the yard’s floodlights. I was overwhelmed with feelings of hope for humanity, and felt inspired about our unknown future.

Minutes earlier, the sunshine had caused beads of sweat to dot my forehead. As the eclipse took hold, a strange breeze chilled my skin. Everyone, including the birds, became silent.

The sun had transformed. Red and orange solar flares licked out around the edge of the black disc engulfing it. I saw a flower — then a red, heavenly ring. Finally, the moon slipped slowly away, releasing the sun back to a familiar yellow splendor.

*This piece first appeared in Prison Journalism Project at prisonjournalismproject.org.

Christopher Monihan A310612