You came to visit me in jail

“Hi.”

“…”

It’s like I started a new job. You turn around and suddenly you’re not winning anymore. I feel all weird and accountable to the people still facing my old way. I am close to some of them, close enough to hug. Sure there is eye contact, nods and the whole what the fuck are you doing but the Hypothetical is feeling rich and word free. Very quickly I am walking and it is eeeeeeeasy.

I never check my lotto numbers. You should know that about me.

In minutes, all I can notice is the other guys who I might not have ever noticed weren’t facing my direction before I had turned around. They are like spoiled milk, brain handicapped, parochial. They are the new leaders. They are the great heavy hands I will chase to hold, hands soon on my ass, around my throat, real leaders of the new community.

Your talking.

I miss the hard work and the feeling that the hard work was behind me or more appropriately, under me. It felt, always, like a pyramid. It was never a ladder. You don’t build ladders as you go. Now, I see, having turned around, who was really taking advantage of me, who was sitting right up at the top, who was taking a step up for free after I had made room. It was always you.

Everyone is always fighting for something. I would have said that everyone is always fighting for something here, but where else is there? I felt at first that it made sense to acquiesce to the guards to the raping, though not at first to the raping. I still fight. If they care they knock your ass out, they really fuck up your face. My face has been fucked up, now I just look hard.

I won’t come close enough for you to touch. I can’t hear you but I know that’s what you want.
I won’t justify it now, all the fighting, it still seems wrong. Yelling, banging on shit like doors or shaking the bars, there is some gross, communal lie made powerful by it. I will not get the community so I don’t feed it. They know. I thought that was why they would attack me at first but know I know that’s not it.

I really did forget you were here. You can’t let yourself get anxious, you can’t, and by you I mean me. I won’t fit in your purse and if I did, they still didn’t let you bring it. If you can’t save me, and you can’t, then fuck you. I assume you left because I stopped looking and if I cared I would wonder if you had, not having seen it. I don’t.

I think I had slept, a little at least. I sit up and your still there, outside the bars, that one wall I can’t shut. It’s so real to me.

“You can’t visit this long.”