Solitary Confinement

Ramifications of confinement, alone

Social stripped, flesh and concrete

Redemptive lights

Shown between latrine stains

Those who know don’t

Explain what it was

Because it wasn’t

When alone nothing else is there

When isolated isolation becomes being

And being was never very much at all

Except toast on a chilly Saturday

Sturdy table, small window,

The hum of the refrigerator

Unavoidable crumbs lain about the blue green

Perfectly round and incomplete coffee stain

Car passing slowly below

Arms of a tree reaching past the view

Of nothing much at all

An appointment to go

With stairs and firm shirt

A crisp white paper set down on gray

Jewelry on hands turned upwards, affray

Resisting objections, jailor’s thick hands pushed down on the temple

The light flickers and sputters

Go away young man; go away

Back on a street, hot melting asphalt under the feet

Pulling one downward, between pebbles,

A darkness so black

Comforting and hole

Alone. Alone. Alone.

Dorian LaGuardia
September 2022