Talking Behind Glass

by Myles Gordon

Sitting in the waiting room’s folding chairs,

we watch the television with no sound

bolted too close to the ceiling.

Those of us who see each other every week

pretend we don’t and keep watching tv. 

The CO says it’s time.

Beltless and shoeless

we line up

at the metal detector.

The shuttle bus weaves us

through the complex

to waiting sons, husbands,

fathers, brothers, lovers, and friends.

A circular line of razor wire

tops the outer chain link fence in a tilted arc pouring over –

and already I am going back –

to the top of the cresting wave in North Truro

on our yearly Cape Cod vacation.

You would crouch, waiting

for it to break over you, bury you,

then explode through the surface

beaming a seven-year old’s 

missing front tooth smile,

arms extended; fists raised.

I picture you

contemplatively walking 

a fluorescent-lit corridor

in one of these brick buildings,

your thick-walled path inaccessible

as a monastery is to the uninitiated

and uninvited.

I enter, an interloper from the outside.

You emerge, an earnest, unconvinced novitiate,

from within.

Picking up our phones,

we talk behind glass,

words spilling 

back and forth

like pebbles through a rain stick.

You put a sock 

over the mouthpiece of your phone

as a safeguard from the pandemic,

one of the life hacks

you have picked up inside,

like how to watch the common area tv

by crouching at the food slot of your cell,

how to sweettalk your time in the hole

from a week to three days,

knowing when to smile and when not to,

knowing how to not be fucked with,

knowing how to not trust anybody.

Or maybe you put a sock

on the phone to stop my words 

from getting too close,

or maybe as a reminder

to filter everything you say

and never to say too much.

You sit now with the authoritative grunt of an adult,

leaning forward, hands folded

in intense concentration.

Each visit adds distinction to your face.

Looking at you, I see you at every age –

at three you would take my face

in both hands as I carried you

and turn my head to see

whatever it was that momentarily

amazed you, at nine, in a photo,

you leaping from the picnic table

arms spread with dexterity

and grace that embraced the world.

Now you sit in faded gray scrubs

leaning forward, unkempt beard,

braids taut and twisted back,

the sharp cheekbones rising from your crooked smile.

I look everywhere on your face 

except your eyes.

When you were sixteen

you rushed out of your room

to the refrigerator

and tried to pour

chocolate milk in your ear.

I stopped you before any came out,

guided you to the couch,

and asked what drugs you were on.

Your eyes rolled back, 

closed, opened,

rolled back again and closed in sleep.

You didn’t answer.

I sat until three in the morning

listening to you breathe,

wondering if delivering the Narcan

would be as simple as they said.

You woke up and

asked me why 

you were in the living room,

then walked back to your room, to bed.

I didn’t know how to ask you then

or ask you now

how this all started

or if you want it to stop.

When you call from jail,

the pre-recorded 

Miranda message

explaining we have the right 

to remain silent

often isn’t necessary.

When you were eleven

you sat putting on socks and cleats

as I drove us to your soccer matches.

I drove the same route to your rehab. 

At your discharge when you were sixteen,

the counselor warned

in three years it would be

jail, hospital, or the morgue. 

That was three years ago.

Now you are sentenced to eighteen months.

In that time,

the earth will travel one hundred thirty-nine 

million miles in its orbit

tethered to the sun;

you will take twelve million breaths;

the moon will blast full force each month

then disappear in blackness

eighteen times.

The day I called the police

I found a twenty-two

in your backpack

and a three-eighty

beneath your comforter.

It was the blue one you’d had since five,

with a pattern of tropical fish.

You would spread it

on the floor at bedtime,

jumping around the edges

so you would not fall

in the water,

a game of hopscotch

to extend the day a few minutes.

You would do anything

to keep moving, to

keep going, as if

the ocean could swallow you

and you would never be

this free again.

At forty-four minutes, 

the phone clicks twice

to indicate one final minute. 

When it ends,

you will go where I can’t go 

and I will go where you can’t go.

When you were born, 

the white couple planning to adopt you first

left the hospital and never came back

when they saw you were a 

different color than your birth mother.

I never told you this.

You look at the wall behind me

and I look at the wall behind you.

There is no clock

so we look at each other

like a photo mirroring its negative.

What can a white father

say to his black son in jail

when all these years we have talked behind glass

even when the glass wasn’t there?