Another selection from Prisoner’s Lament, forthcoming in a second edition from Moonstone Press.
HELL FREEZES OVER
I never thought that Hell would be freezing, not fire but ice the torture of preference for the Bureau of Prisons so you slept in overcoats and winter hats and shivering for hours tossing and turning your way to warmth and just when you managed to somehow find sleep there was the three am count and the guard’s flashlight in your bunk and then another hour to try and morph your shaking into sleep and then the alarm goes off at five am and it’s morning and time to get up in the meat locker and you ask the guard about the heat and he tells you to “fuck off because all you guys are a pain in the ass, who’s hot, who’s cold” and then you go to work in the kitchen washing dishes and scrubbing pans but at least it’s warm for five hours; but you finish up and you go back to your bunk exhausted but still cold, colder even and ten minutes later you’re shivering again.
A different kind of hell.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison
If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.
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