Cataract City

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Of the 2,912 nights I spent in prison, two were the longest: the first and the last. But then, most cons would tell you the same.

That first was endless, even more so than those long-ago nights in the woods with Owen when the wind hissed along the earth and the darkness was full of howling. In the woods an animal might rip you to shreds, sure, but it had no goal other than to protect itself and its offspring. The Kingston Pen housed animals who’d flatline you for looking at them cockeyed or breathing their air.

My cot felt no thicker than a communion wafer, coils cork-screwing into my spine. Penitentiary darkness was different than the outside-the-walls variety. A prison never achieves full black: security lamps forever burning behind mesh screens in the high corners of the cellblock, hourly flashlight sweeps. Your eyes become starved for true night — anything is better than granular, gummy semi-dark where shapes shift, half glimpsed, at the edges of your sight.

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