An intimate first person non-fiction storytelling experience about incarceration in the United States.
The mailroom is where we went to mail letters that needed extra postage amongst other things. We also picked up packages sent to us by family and friends.
“Good morning, Monihan,” said Mr. O’Neal the mailroom supervisor. “How are you today?”
Continue reading “Poor Widdle Inmates by Christopher”
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
So Chris told me I could write about whatever topic I picked, and after much deliberation I’ve chosen my year of 1st’s. My Dad, who was my dude, passed away last July so I’m just now finishing up the 1st year without him by my side, holding me up through this struggle. I know loss is loss and grief is grief, but being behind these walls exacerbates everything ten-fold, and to me the loss of my Dad was the loss of an entity, a giant, a nightmare come all too true.
Continue reading “The First Year Without My Dad by Ashleigh”
I’ll never forget my first day in county jail. I’d stepped into a world that I only knew from television and Hollywood movies, and like every Hollywood movie about crime & punishment, Hollywood’s depiction is nothing like reality. The only thing Hollywood gets right is the fact that it’s stressful. This is especially true if you’ve never stepped foot into a county jail–any jail, for that matter–because this is the day you were arrested.
January 24
, 2018, pound pound pound (the sound jerks me awake), and I lay there frozen for a moment in time. It has been 16 long days awaiting this moment anxiously. EVERYONE knows that knock. I knew before the door opened that it was the cops and a detective.
My ex is at the door. Before opening he has checked and verified my suspicions. He looks at me and says “are you ready?” Tears well up in my eyes but I don’t blink, I will them away. He opens the door.
Continue reading “My First & Only Time Being Arrested By Felicia (Ohio Reformatory for Women)”