for BAJ
1. Death Row
There’s a toilet in the corner. I never sit on it without my clipboard on one knee, and paper and pencil. I have a bucket down by my side, so I can wash socks or underwear. Three things done at the same time, because my time is unknown.
I read the papers. They tell me that people still beat and burn, still rob and cheat and lie to the core of their damaged hearts. Newspapers have told me this all my life, and all the lives of my parents, and my grandparents.
I play basketball, not because I enjoy it, but because it keeps my muscles toned and the blood rushing through my veins, when others might have wished it to stop.
2. Dreaming
In the middle of some nights I can wake up and not know where I am. For a second. Then I remember.
3. Words
I get letters from strangers, some supportive, telling me to hold on, keep up hope, would I like them to write to official persons? I ask them to send me money, and pictures, colours, joy, the sky, jokes. Maria tells me in her letters she likes to read poems over and over until she knows them by heart.
4. Walls
The walls of this cell have breathed me for all these years, sucking up my tears, absorbing even the excrement from my body, every bead of sweat and shout of pain. Sometimes even the hairs come off my scalp and float away to be caught upon a wall, and I stand and stare and feel I will crumble into molecules and become building blocks for more walls, prison walls, death walls.
5. Wood
When I write I use a wooden pencil. A reminder of what still exists outside. Sometimes I forget there are living trees out there that provide wooden pencils for me, and paper. How many of these have I caused to be cut down for the purpose of a letter, a poem, a story? I know some would say that it should not happen, people like me should not be allowed to write, should not be allowed pencils and paper, or books, or basketball, or conversation, or anything except extermination.
6. The lights
They are flickering. The chair is being tested, to make sure it’s always ready.
7. Punishment
The world, this world, has led me here. After the fire, the burning will come. One day they will fix me in position, and put witnesses, flesh like mine, blood like mine, in behind a glass of shadow. I will feel their eyes on me, piercing holes in my skin for the sparks to fly through. Flesh like mine, except maybe a different colour; blood like mine, except not destined to be stilled by current. Same species, different worlds.
I guess I could have been pulled asunder by horses tied to each of my limbs. I could have had my bowels pulled out in front of my eyes, and smelt the queer stench of them. I could have had hot pincers tear skin and muscle from my chest. I could have been burned alive at the stake, but instead I’m threatened with burning at the chair, electrical flames, modern technology instead of ancient nature. There could have been crowds blowing their foul breaths at me from blackened mouths, but my onlookers will be inaudible and invisible.
8. Death
lies down with me at night. It is my pillow, and my blanket, and the mattress upon which I sleep. It tickles my eyelids with the first ache of light, sits on my shoulder as I remember how long I have been here, clings to my body when I wash.
I eat it and drink it and breathe it, read it and think it and hear it. The spoon I raise to my mouth has Death perched on its edge, ready to swallow me.
9. Wood II
I have a small piece of pencil left. After this has been transformed to words on paper, there will be no more wooden pencils. They have none remaining in the prison store, just plastic ones. I will have to write with a totally inanimate object, something that never breathed, never carried life-giving nutrient through its system, never had sun pour into its leaves.
10. Burning
I’m not supposed to feel. I’m a criminal. Nothing I say counts for anything, because I’m inhuman. I don’t belong with the rest of the species anymore. I am evil, black like the devil, ready to burn for an eternity. But they will burn me here first, just to be sure.
11. God
I have prayed to God in all forms, and received silence in my ears. I have prayed for absolution, for forgiveness, for freedom, for release, for sleep into eternity. I have prayed for someone to come through that tiny window and settle themselves upon me as a warmth not quite forgotten. I have prayed for death and destruction, for all law to be smashed, the good it has done me.
I have beaten these walls so full of me, beaten them with my fists as if they were myself, pain flowing through my hands and arms and back and forth until the cell became one echo of suffering, until the sound of it clanged into my head like chains, chains that burned into black skin in centuries past. That burn still.
12. Am I dreaming, or am I dead?
I don’t know. But there is no cell now. It has gone. The fire took everything: people, walls, windows, food, tables, basketball court, plumbing, all of it. The men who carried me out went too, dropping me when the heat melted them, disappearing into the smoke.
A few coughed and crawled their way out, bodies locked into survival mode, heading for air, heading for anything that wasn’t heat and smoke and flame. Scattered remnants amongst the fire engines, ambulances, police vehicles, security, onlookers.
There had been a riot. A group of men set fire to the building. I don’t know how many have died. I can feel the heat of the flames, can remember seeing men fly through the air, trapeze-less, streaming orange wings behind them.
Why did they save me? Why did they carry me out? I thought they wanted to kill me. Why didn’t they just leave me, leave all of us, to burn? One huge electric chair, feral executioner, out of control, punishing our wickedness in a single conflagration.
Lucky 13.
The prison guard told me an hour ago that I would stay here overnight.
I am in a room with big windows, and for once in a long time I can watch the sky darken, the colours change and disappear. It is almost too much for my eyes.
The guard comes in, carrying a tray of food for both of us. There are two candles burning. I take my bread roll and break it into halves, then eat it like a hungry eight year old.
The guard pours water from a jug into two plastic cups. He sits at a separate table, facing me. He does not speak.
I say, “I get poetry in some of my letters. One lady tells me she can recite lots of it.”
“Yeah? Can’t say I can recite anything.”
“No. Neither can I.”
We chew in silence again.
Then the guard says, “The only thing I can remember is the twenty-third psalm. The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
He stops his fork midway between plate and mouth. “Er, what’s the next bit? Something about walking through the valley of the shadow of death?”
Our eyes lock, then the guard looks down at his plate.
I stare at a candle flame, take a sip of water. Eat.
I do not speak again.
