Content Warning: Suicide

I have been visiting prisons as long as I can remember and have lost count of the number of times my picture may have been taped to the wall of a cell. Visits Upstate meant early morning departures on the weekends. Trips to the County meant mostly middle of the day and evenings. Geography lessons of heartache experienced through small towns and cartographies of captivity. Same waiting spaces. Same security wanding and invasions. Folding your arms over your underwire is supposed to silence the screeching of the hand-held metal detector. Some correctional officers invested in showing that you are just another number attached to the number of someone deemed less than human.

There is no main character, no setting, no plot. Just rows and rows of babies, acting in different ways, living different experiences.

If something so small, the slightest ill harmony, can make someone like Ryan Gosling ugly, what does it mean about me?

It is nice to be seen, after all. Even if not for what I am.

Every year after, I never forgot what my father said. This is for us. This is for us. This is for us.