My Walkabout

The shackles around his ankles feel like a ship’s anchor, ready to plunge down into hell’s depths and wash away the madness. Slowly stepping off the boat, the salty air reminds him of home. The man’s new home, a small cell on the unforgiving rock.

The guards give you a look, only one look, but you know it’s interpretation. Obey or be punished. The sound of metal grating against metal as the door closes in, and shuts out all you once knew. Goodbye world. Just a number now.

Seconds turn to minutes, hours to days, weeks lend to his madness in this solitary routine. The flowers grow in macabre forms.

Visitation room, a cruel joke. He sits in the chair, eyes looking into the dirty window at family and friends that will not see him. He can barely see himself.

Looking out onto the bay, the city, life bustling, unknowingly torturing the souls within these walls, these chains. Perhaps an apt punishment for the crimes committed, perhaps one of man’s most cruel devices.

He looks onto the buildings here now that make up the landscape, the images that now fill his mind, his time. Will he ever see beauty again, or is what is before him now all that can be?

Retiring to bed, washing his hands after using the toilet, the smell of C block choking his nostrils, the words circle his head as he lays down for dark dreams….