Your Life as Every Rank in a Prison

The door closes behind you at four-seventeen in the afternoon. Not a slam. A click. And that click is the sound of everything you had being suspended indefinitely. They give you a number before they give you a cell. A cellmate named Reyes who says one thing when you arrive. Bottom bunk is mine. What follows is not a sentence. It is a system. A population with its own currency, its own geography, its own authority that has nothing to do with the guards. A test in the yard on a Thursday afternoon. A network built on twelve dollars of commissary and the ability to read a legal document. A man named Decker who asks the same question three times. Your best friend Stanley drives three hours every twelve days to sit across a table from you for forty-five minutes and tell you the outside world is still there. Five years later you walk through a door that clicks on the right side. The hardest part is the grocery store. This is your life as every rank in a prison.