Sunday, June 15, 2014

Ami-with-an-i: Prison volunteer work on a summer afternoon

"I feel drowned by all these years," he said into my video camera
or
"All these years have drowned me"
or
"See, I been drowned by all these years"
or
I am drowning in these years, these years where last month I seen a helicopter land in the middle of the prison yard and that was the first helicopter I seen in twenty years. Since Desert Storm.
or
Drowning is like losing yourself under a number of indistinguishable and indeterminable years, where: gray the Oklahoma winters, gray the grass, gray our uniforms, gray the water gray our food gray these prayers that go up into the gray clouds. 
or
I'm drowning. Can't you see? Can't you hear?
or
Something about drowning that struck me as so poignant I reached for my iPhone to record his words exactly, only no phones allowed in here so I repeated that phrase to myself over and over until I forgot it. Until I drowned right along with them until then we wheeled our cameras and our cue cards and our see-through Baggies of snacks out the prison fences into blue skies and the waiting SUVs to take us for some ice cream down the road at McDonald's.



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