Member-only story
A Man in the Breaking
Remade in the shape of aloneness
In solitary confinement I walked back and forth, running memories through my head while I narrated them aloud. Various events of my life, repeatedly, until they made
some kind of sense. Then I would experience some stray thought, a detail, and begin the process again in light of this new detail. Because context mattered. The details did not change
the story. The details changed me. Then I sat on the concrete block that was my bed and rested my head in my hands, and listened to the boy several doors down yell
for the guards. Stay calm, I told myself. One breath in and one breath out. Color never entered the cell, but I got it to where color never left it either, then I gathered
my hands like porcelain figurines and took them from wall to wall. I was hungry but never starving. Just consistently persistently hungry. And sometimes the guards came
late with the food or it was unappealing, but I ate fast so I could get back to being solitary. I was a monk and the guards were invaders. My time in solitary confinement, though proscribed
as a punishment, was mine. Aloneness was thrust upon me as a penalty but I made it a gift. The cries of other prisoners came muffled through my thick steel door. I won’t pretend
that I empathized with them. They were disturbing and raucous and disrupted my newly made peace. But I knew the soil beneath their broken pavement.
They couldn’t hear me, but I spoke softly, shh shh shh, it’s okay, relax, and after a while the shouts died down. Some of the men hadn’t been broken yet, and were in need
of breaking. I prayed they would get their breaking soon. All men need breaking. Breaking is good and right and happens to all men. Breaking is a gift. But prayer became
something else. Something I preferred writing in short strokes on the walls. Talking to God never felt just or correct, but writing to God was safe. I waited for him to read it. I wasn’t convinced
he was with me, but if I wrote my messages on the walls he might come in the cell to read them, and then we would be alone. Maybe then we could have
