My husband has been incarcerated for five years now. Each week it gets harder and harder to write him a letter. I don’t know why but when I think of him and prison I see colors. These colors first came to me while I was on my way to pick my children up from school. There was this bright orange flash and then my world turned black. Black, a holding place waiting for the beauty of light to shine through. I didn’t know then that this blackness would become a part of my life. I remember… it was a nightmare. Tammy
The red blood flowed like rivers down the sidewalk near where my children go to school. Yellow crime scene tape encircled poles warning spectators to stay back. Men in blue uniforms asking questions, placing cuffs on a black man. I screamed because that black man was mine.
Sitting within the cold brown walls of the courtroom I see my husband walk in wearing bright orange overalls, white tennis shoes. My eyes swollen pink from crying cannot even look him in the face. A man with a black robe walks in; all stand up. The air is muddy thick. A lady with green eyes cries. My husband’s lawyer conveys, The bullet was meant for someone else; it was an accident. The judge slams down his green pearl handle gavel, Guilty. Tan uniforms escort my husband out as he glances back to see me cry.
One week later,
I'm finally allowed to visit my husband. My annoyance is red. The visiting process makes me feel like the
criminal. A smoky glass wall between my husband and I, we talk using a
telephone. I cry, listen to my husband describe the kennel he is now housed in.
Urine Yellow walls, rusty molded toilet, gray bar windows. This is home for the next seventeen
years. A buzzer rings, a loud voice
says, Visiting time is over. Pressing my brown palm against the window,
I say I will come again next week. I
stand, raise my purple dress, show my panties, wink, mouth I love you. I
walk slowly to my car, gray buzzards hover over my head
