after mosahb abu toha's "Palestine A-Z"
a
my anxiety is so bad i have a prescription. a pill a day resets my baseline, but i still have bad days. the weekend we meet, you call me and walk me through what to expect, because you know my anxiety is worse when there are unknowns.
b
everywhere i go, i bring a book with me so that i have something to do while i’m waiting. we’re not allowed to bring in anything in this place, so i sit on this plastic traverse bench, my back to the wall, and people-watch to pass the time.
c
i don't cry when we say goodbye. i don't cry all day — not in the late morning, not in the afternoon, not until the evening, when i'm driving alone in the dark and julien sings "oh can you be healed?" — in that moment, it hits me, and tears are streaming down my face.
d
after our morning together, it only seems appropriate to go someplace that feels like you. driving around deep creek lake, i’m looking for fragments of you, wondering how much has changed in the 16 years since you were last here, and part of me wishes you were in the passenger seat and i weren’t alone with your ghost.
e
i arrive early, just like your case manager told me to. when i walk in, i’m the only person, and the woman working looks at me, half annoyed. i tell her i’m visiting. “it’s shift change; you’re too early,” she says. “come back in 20 minutes.” so i go back to my car and write you a text. i run the engine and turn up the heat to calm my nerves. when i return 15 minutes later, there are a dozen people in line ahead of me.
f
i’m in a room overwhelmingly full of felons, but it barely crosses my mind. everyone is there to see their family, their friends. i know somewhere in my mind that these are dangerous people, but i tune them all out and focus on you.
g
there’s a barrier that separates visitors from inmates, and it’s made of wood and glass. at the end, there’s a gap, and someone has placed two plastic chairs — a forest green color, not faded from the sun, because they’ve never been outside — there. when it’s time to say goodbye, a correctional officer moves the chairs so that we can hug across the counter, which is just about as awkward as it sounds.
h
later on, you'll tell me you wish you would have hugged me longer.
i
after i pass through the metal detector, someone stamps the inside of my left wrist with invisible ink. each time i pass a checkpoint, i have to hold my wrist up to a black light. i don't know what the stamp says, and i don't think to ask, but to lighten the mood, i tell myself it says "not an inmate."
j
what does justice look like? you’ve now been in custody since you were a child: a juvenile charged as an adult, a future robbed in exchange for futures robbed, a life destined to be lived out behind bars. is this what justice looks like? unfortunately, i only have lots of questions and no real answers.
k
there’s a sign that says NO KISSING! but for some reason, after i leave, the correctional officer gives you a hard time. “but she came all the way from germany!” she exclaims, and i imagine you shrugging and smiling because you don’t have the energy to explain us to her, and it’s no one's business anyway.
l
i thought about telling you i love you in person, but at the last moment, i’m unable to say it, because i’m afraid of how real it feels. later that night, i’ll tell you for the first time, and you’ll say it back, and now we rarely end a call without it.
m
there’s a woman who has proclaimed to the whole room that she got married last night. she says her new last name to anyone who will listen, proud of it, wearing it like a badge of honor. i’ve heard it so many times i can’t forget it even if i wanted to. later, i look up her new husband out of morbid curiosity and find out he was a registered child sex offender when he committed his crime. now he’s doing 30 years because he murdered a woman who was hiking by bashing her head in with a rock.
n
in the waiting room, it’s mostly quiet. some people whisper, though the woman who got married is talking loud enough for all of us to hear her business. occasionally a loudspeaker crackles to life and says the last name of someone, meaning the people who have come to visit them can go see them. when i hear your name, it’s accompanied by two others. i am in the lead of the group, but i step to the side, unsure, telling the woman next to me that it’s my first time here, and i don’t know what to do. she gives me a kind smile and stays next to me, explaining what will happen each step of the way, through the sally port doors, down the long hallway, and into the visiting room, until the moment i walk in and lock eyes with you.
o
when the guard comes up to us to let us know our visit is over, i'm resigned and sad. i know it's impossible, but i wish i could have stopped the clock. i wish we'd had more time.
p
the first time i come here, the morning of our visit, i park in the lot for employees. i don't realize it until later that evening when i'm back, but this time i'm parked in the visitor's parking lot, and i'm the only car. as i sit there and cry in the dark, i wish i could have a do-over of the morning, if only to see you again. you're only a few hundred feet away, but you might as well be in another country, and there's nothing either of us can do about it.
q
the woman on the phone told me the lockers were free, and after i hang up my jacket, my locker won't close. a woman sees me struggling and tells me i need a quarter, which i'll eventually get back. so, sort of free. i put my jacket back on and go out to my car, again, to retrieve one. then, i walk back into the building for the third and final time.
r
the rust belt industry jobs have dried up, and people who used to work in the kelly-springfield tire plant and the celanese chemical plant and the pittsburgh plate glass plant have all gotten jobs where you live. in one breath, they say they don't want prisoners in their county because it'll drive up crime. in the next, they say being a correctional officer is a recession-proof job, because there will always be people to lock up.
s
when i get to the front of the line, the woman working asks me for your state identification number, your sid. she types it in and then squeals with surprise. apparently everyone was expecting me, because she points to me and announces it to the room. later in the day, when i pick up my id on my way out, there’s a yellow post-it note on it that has your name, your sid, and the writing “1-a *special.” i hold on to this piece of paper, what feels like the only tangible thing proving we met.
t
you’re sitting across from me, and you have your glasses on, the tortoiseshell ones you think make you look like an intellectual. the first time i saw you wearing them, i was surprised: you’d never told me you wear glasses. but somehow they feel like an extension of your personality now.
u
there’s a long list of all the things we’re not allowed to wear: no leggings, no shorts, no tank tops. nothing too tight, nothing too loose. no see-through clothing, no exposing midriffs, no revealing necklines, no excessive splits. men can wear belts but women can’t wear underwire bras. they police our bodies in here, just like they do out in the real world.
v
some facilities have vending machines where you can buy overpriced food and share it with your loved ones over the course of your visit. where you’re allowed to bring in coins in a clear ziplock bag. i know this because i read it on a reddit forum. we can’t, because our visits are no-contact visits, which means we’re separated by a physical barrier. but for some reason, there’s a vending machine in this waiting-room-that-feels-like-purgatory, and it makes no sense, because we’re not supposed to have any money with us anyway.
w
the first thing i notice when i approach the prison is the water tower. it's ugly, just like you told me it would be. the second thing i notice is the wire. there is so much wire.
x
we have to take off our shoes, just like at the airport. they go in a bin, alongside my locker key — which is the only other thing i'm allowed to bring with me — and through the x-ray machine. then i walk through the metal detector. i'd worried for weeks about my piercings setting off the alarm, but it turns out i had no reason to.
y
you, you, you, finally.
z
there is no z, because i don't want this to end.
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Natalye Childress (she/her) is a Berlin-based editor, writer, translator, and sad punk. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and appears or is forthcoming in Twin Bird Review, wildness, Half Mystic, Burial Magazine, Dodo Eraser, and elsewhere. She's also the EIC of electric pink and coastlines review