Prison

What do you do about a love that consumes you, refuses to let go, won’t tolerate a second of being ignored, leaves you breathless until you suffocate?

Can you banish it, like a prisoner in solitary confinement sending the guard away, or must you endure its sporadic passes, just out of reach on the other side of the smooth steel bars, tormenting you with a message of silence only broken by the sound of hard-soled shoes striking the unforgiving floor, the hollowness echoing as it bounces off sharp angles, empty walls, and a ceiling void of promises?

Are you constantly inviting it in while it stubbornly refuses to join you, torturing you by dangling the keys inches from your nose then slipping them into a pocket far out of your reach, mocking everything inside you while you serve your sentence, disappointed at every parole hearing, jealously begging for furlough then getting picked up for a misdemeanor every time one is granted, adding more years to your sentence with each hopeful breath of fresh, free air, allowing you to momentarily glimpse the freedom you’re denied, making sure that you’re fully aware of everything you’re deprived of, eventually inspiring you to consider committing a heinous felony, to make the crime fit the punishment?

What do you think of the tender green leaves of the flowers and trees, the clouds gently shifting in various shades of white across the azure backsplash, taking turns tangoing with the sun, intermittently making shadows disappear by obscuring the bright shards of light, bouncing them away from earth like some spongy barrier, keeping the sky in the sky?

What of the water, freely flowing to larger bodies, laughing and bubbling, appearing stagnant when running deep, occasionally raging, constantly traveling to the sea where grains of sand sneak into oysters who turn them into pearls?

And the earth itself: ochre, cobalt, garnet, obsidian, amethyst, jade, ruby, emerald, sapphire, citrine, diamond, and bloodstone, veins of ore striating through this shell coating a ball of molten metal?

The air you crave, seasoned with open flowers and fragrant trees: honeysuckle, tea olive, mimosa, rose, lavender, gardenia, cedar, cypress, spruce, and pine?

Where is your fire? Can you reclaim it, forget about the next hearing, and break your cage from the inside, perhaps chanting some magical spell under the light of the full moon and another in the darkness of the new? Is there a ritual you can perform, involving candles, incense, myrrh, and foreign symbols with no semblance to anything you’ve ever understood?

Perhaps you should dance naked in your cell, hips swaying to the rhythm inside you, arms undulating to guitars and keys no one else hears, work yourself into your own frenzy, abandon yourself to it—after all, it belongs to you, your own creation, and if you’re in it for life, shouldn’t you bring some life into it?