PRISONER EXPRESS

At the present time I have to settle for a cup of coffee and some cookies, starring out through the bars and listening to someone a few cells down arguing about sports or something else.

After almost a decade of eating prison food, food is what crosses my mind first because to sit here and think of the time wasted instead of being home with ones' family becomes painful. One of my best pleasures was to be wakened by my daughter and dragged into the living room to watch Saturday morning cartoons, then showing her how to make breakfast. This decade has cost me most of my family because what can one discuss. Conversation becomes redundant and family members get to the point of not wanting to give you bad news which goes with every day life. So instead of thinking of the pleasures one gets from shared moments, with a loved one, I focus on the foods I like and the time I spent by myself.

Have you ever sat in a park by yourself and watched the happiness on people's faces as they enjoy a beautiful spring day?

That happiness is contagious, and I used to experience warmth, which stayed with me for the remainder of the days. Sunrises and sunsets are beautiful in pictures, postcards and movies but to have actually been in either the East or West to experience it as I have is a pleasure that never leaves you.

It won't be long now, I'll be able to sit in a park, only after a decade of hardly any sun I won't be sitting under a shady tree, I plan to sit where I can have the sun right on me. I close my eyes and smile at a picture of myself sitting in a park, knowing I will never return to this 5 'by 9' cell, where one experiences the death of ones' simple pleasures.