FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS – MEDICAL REPORT
DATE: April 2020
INMATE NAME: [REDACTED]
FACILITY: FCC [REDACTED]
SYMPTOMS REPORTED:
☒ Fever ☒ Shortness of breath
☒ Isolation-induced panic
☒ Hunger ☒ Despair
[INTAKE: inhale]
I read your letter.
Thanks for explaining—
this is a global pandemic.
Sounds like things are rough
out there
in the real world.
A shame about the restaurants—
your favorite cafes all
closed indefinitely.
Half-empty grocery stores,
bare shelves, no toilet paper.
And schools are canceled?
I bet the kids are thrilled.
No bells, no math tests,
just cartoons and cereal.
So you think isolation is hard.
[HOLD: breath suspended]
We were locked down
before the virus came.
But after March,
they sealed the cells
like tombs.
No chow hall.
No rec yard.
No visits.
No news but rumor.
COs slid Styrofoam trays
through slots like we were dogs—
cold eggs, white bread,
something called “meat.”
A man on C-tier coughed for a week,
then disappeared.
No word.
Some say he died.
Some say “transferred.”
They say the virus rides air.
That it waits
on steel and skin,
on the breath of men
stacked three high
in triple-bunks.
[EXHALE: thin air]
One CO wore the same gloves
cell to cell,
face to face,
smirking like he knew
he was the reaper.
I write you this letter
on the back of a grievance form.
It’s the only paper I’ve got.
No one answers the kite box.
The chaplain’s gone.
The library’s locked.
We whisper through vents
through drain pipes,
like ghosts in the wall.
[FINAL BREATH]
Some nights
the silence blooms
like a virus in a lung.
Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review. Shea pursued graduate classes through the Great Smokies Writing Program, UNC Asheville, and Western Carolina University, where she studied under Ron Rash.
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