I want to refuse it, ignore it, pretend that it doesn’t even exist. But how can I when it is so glaringly, obviously real? The small, neatly folded paper is a stark contrast to my dark surroundings. It sticks out like a sore thumb. While I sit amongst dark wood and fabrics in the dim light of the evening, I’m seduced into wanting to touch it. The inmate who thrust it into my palm scared the living shit out of me when he palmed it as he brushed by. His sour, dank breath instructed me not to react which, I might add, was next to impossible when his invasive presence was so near to the perimeter of my personal boundaries. He invaded that space, pushing me to places I don’t want to go. He made me have a physical reaction – the kind where your skin pebbles from the chill that runs down your spine and the hair on your arms stands on end. If his eyes hadn’t been so… sane, I would have reacted in a completely different manner. I see now, he didn’t want to hurt me.
