There is a cave at the end of the world where all of the madwomen finger the black dawn red and bend back the bars of sanity until they curve like crescent moons, shining a wet gleam onto a mirrored sea. These are all the cast-off girls, the crazy women. They laugh at the insanity of antiseptic hallways, bleach-white, the stench of chemicals. Here, all of the greatest artists and poets and the broadest minds of history are called crazy within their own narrow time-sphere of eternity. Here, there are glass-walled cells where the women are neatly organized and separated, filed away like documents in plastic prisons.
Read More
I pace the floors at two and three, a ghost in my own home. If I step here, the boards will creak – and there, someone has placed a chair where there should be nothing. But if I kneel, if I press my tongue to the dark wood and lay myself inside the dust, I can pour myself through the cracks and find me again.
The second sleep is thick, full of repeated words and winding places. I wake in pieces, silver light at the edges of the windows. A dull heaviness behind my knees. When I kick at the blankets, my hand settles inside a round spot the temperature of baked bread. It’s back.
Read More
Today is the day I’ve spent weeks preparing for. Reading my argument to anyone who’ll listen. Reciting it in my head during workouts. Dreaming it in the middle of the night.
We have two major hurdles. One, the government’s attorney always argues against any bond amount. Two, even if the judge grants a bond, the chances of your being able to post it are slim. You have nothing and your family, who you can’t contact anyway for fear of putting them in danger, has no money to send you. You have one close friend in the United States who’s been like a second-mother to you and has agreed to be your sponsor should you get out. She’s offered to put money up for your bond but she cannot give much because she herself has very little.
On the day of your hearing, I rise early, walk long in the desert, whisper prayers to a sliver of moon lit up by the rising sun. A falcon, perched on a utility pole, lifts off as I approach and circles above me twice before flying towards the hot-pink horizon. I take it as a good omen. But I am wrong.
Read More