LIFE PREVAILS
The tiny white petals stood bright against red clay bricks, hairlike roots wrapped around the edge where century-old mortar met century-old handmade bricks from the original State Penitentiary brick factory. The dissolving red squares are the only witnesses of a bygone era. I’m impressed by the tenacity of this little flower, the edge of the brick was offset just enough to allow a small ledge to form. Exposed to the elements after layers of lead-based paint had chipped away, a seed must have found a resting spot.
On my scavenger hunt, I find small patches of moss and numerous little flowers, and I feel I have found buried treasure. These small seeds were probably carried by winds and wings that crossed over a twenty-five-foot wall and found lodging in offset bricks and crumbling mortar. Prison is brutal. I am almost always cold and hungry. The building’s structure with its cold steel bars and locks are callous. As if they can separate the body from the soul. Surrounded by loss, pain, and misery, life prevails.
While separated from the ones I love, I can still see beauty all around me. Even the menacing high concrete walls are no match for Mother Nature. Moss turns golden brown along its top and droops down the walls like worn curtains. Rain falls and makes patterns like mountainscapes. Every crack in the wall hides leaves and petals from windblown fields. The moss lying in the crevices smells of the forest I once ran through as a child. I secretly pick blackberries growing in a long-abandoned hitching post from centuries past. Life prevails all around me and new beginnings welcome me, call me, to find them on the Big Yard of OSP. | KH
