The First Time
Free verse: Ever visited someone you love in prison? I have.
You are naïve of what you can anticipate upon first arriving at the wired entrance you’ve garnered your own imagined dwelling from documentaries and films your brain creates such most horrific place, so when maybe it’s not quite as malignant, you will have no choice but to sigh, to be grateful. At the narrow check-in, mothers tenderly arch removing old shoes, place their wedding rings in the Tupperware bin say you shouldn’t’ve worn grey — but it’s your first time and the flustering butterflies tornado in your guts and you wonder if they might not let you in? There are rules, of course — you left your phone in the Jeep and brought a $5 bill for the vending for some reason that is all it accepts. When you’re through the metal detector waiting shoeless and panic-thorough meanwhile guards shuffling paperwork oblivious to your swelling disquiet a metallic BEEP your flesh rises on end no turning back you’re in they tell you the rules again but heaving surge behind your ears drowns lucid comprehension there is only forward now, and all you think what if he doesn’t look the same?
The walkway from check-in to visiting is paved lined with cruel razor-trim a reminder that pain imminent befalls thee who enters here there are a series of gates an American flag ironic and compulsory you suppose, then you’re inside the lobby before the ultimate door breath arduous heart in standing ovation the guards see you waiting and nod thick air alerts your arrival and at once you see him in profile forest green scrubs a hulking presence but the same crooked smile mirroring your own and there is no way, seeing those teeth, that anyone would be able to deny that the two of you are brother and sister.
©DEF, 2019
D. E. Fulford is a writer who composes (mostly) verse on love, overcoming adversity, and pain — among other topics. She is the editor of Get Inside, a publication seeking new writers presenting a first person perspective on, well, most anything. If you’d like to read more, please visit and follow her blog. Thank you for reading!
