When Did Prison Become My Home?

When Did Prison Become My Home?

My wife had to leave me first,
saying so over the phone,
the fifteen-minute inmate call long enough
for her to speak pregnant & separation
so I knew my home was not my home.
Then came work, waving its arms
like a candidate for office,
promising a few extra dollars
in my trustee account. Too,
I wrote poems nightly after smoking
cigarettes that had spent some time
inside another man’s body.
I got used to fights & stopped getting in them,
turtling to protect myself in penance.
The sense of normalcy never occurred to me.
It arrived without notice, a celebrity in disguise.
By three years in, I might as well have been
a college student living in the dorms.
Each day was like any other:
wake-up, inspection, chow, work,
card games, writing, bed.
My body adapted to the hard bunk,
absolved me of constant aches.
I tied a sock around my eyes & slept.