Saturday nights in neon lights, Sunday in the cell.

I have endeavored, until now, to write and draw beautiful things: effervescent phrases; the darkest of which were eyes closed against the sun. Beautiful things. This is where it gets ugly. This is when the sun goes down, and it comes up again only through the bars of a prison cell. The night starts here.

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The boot flew across the room. It left a smear as it hit the wall, printing it with mud. I untied the other, yanking the laces out of the holes without thought for once again having to re-thread them, even though knew that I would. Re-thread the laces. Through the holes. Hurriedly. Late for something. Wishing I had left them alone. I would tie my boots after I threaded them and put them on my feet. I would wear them to work, to school, over pants, under a skirt, every day, the soles would wear, and I would replace them.

I threw the second one across the room too. Harder, at a wall made of cement. If it had been made of drywall and cracked with the force of my throw I would have torn the wall apart until my fingers bled. Instead, I punched it. Heard my bones crack. My knuckles came away without skin. I dragged them across the wall, slowly, leaving bloody streaks above the mud from my boots. It was wet, and my blood was wet, and I mixed them together until the mud on the wall until the blood from my hands made a fingerprinted set of swirls, and it was brown, and my blood was camouflaged by the mud in swirls that were brown, with no evidence of human suffering, and my palms were filmed with mud. My knuckles were clean. Except for my blood. It ran to my elbows. It dripped on the floor. It wasn't that bad. I wasn't lightheaded. I could mix it with mud, and the dirt that collected from my shoes, and that would make it invisible.