They asked me,
yesterday,
as we sat on the
half-court
on the recreation
yard,
having ‘small-group’:

“If it meant that you could have your legs back,
would you sell your soul?”

Have my legs back?

I knew what they meant,
so I didn’t need an explanation.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar question,
theirs.
It was one I’d answered several times
before.

Never, though, inside these fences.

As this was the case,
I felt good in my reply.

“No. I like who I am.
Who I am is based
inside of the fact
that I was born
with these legs,
that work this way,
turn that way,
always bending this way.”

They had trouble wrapping
their criminal thoughts around
the ideas of liking oneself
or
not taking whatever
was to be had.

We moved past it soon enough,
sitting on plastic safety chairs
in a semi-circle under the
basketball hoop.

We moved on to discuss
spirituality,
empathy,
humanism
on the warm
concrete
under the warm sun,
which glinted off
of the razor-wire
brilliantly.
*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2020