The piece is a dramatic, poetic dialogue between two voices, Speaker A and Speaker B, that explores the experience of a person condemned to life without parole. Speaker A recounts the false promises of plea bargaining, the manipulative tactics of prosecutors, and the crushing weight of societal stigma and minority labeling. The monologue weaves metaphors of hell, animal captivity, and self‑imprisonment to illustrate the psychological torment of incarceration. Themes of systemic injustice, internalized self‑blame, loss of agency, and yearning for freedom permeate the text. Speaker B interjects with reflections on the emptiness of hope, the futility of societal promises, and the relentless pressure of being deemed uneducated or unworthy. The overall narrative paints a bleak yet deeply introspective portrait of a life trapped by external structures and internal choices, highlighting the intersection of legal oppression, social labeling, and personal despair.
Chapters
Warranted for arraignment, a defendant is asked for a plea. I tried to bargain, but it was with a false outlook. I was already misled on what it meant to be free. Stifled shamelessly by a prosecutor's vindictive use of righteous bills. Awaiting a unanimously swayed verdict, already prepared to appeal. Schizophrenically a suspect and a victim. A premeditated target of discriminatory stigmatism. Told that I was special, only to be taught remedial. Raised to believe in standards of higher learning, it only left me spiritually yearning for Forced to watch a pentagon and vertical parallels burning. It's well known that mathematics is the study of relationships symbolically using numbers. Took notes all about it in fall, forgot them all in summer. Forced to refer to myself as a minority incessantly judged by the title's suggestion of incapability rather than ability. A victim of social persuasion with the intent to excite. The oppressed have been forced to unite. You look at me as if that's all. It's been written in blood that united we stand, but it's labels that to divide us, it is then that we fall. Incarcerated in the cell, sentenced to life without parole.
Could this cell be hell?
Heard stories about it, never been there and back to tell. Hell, a deep and dark abyss of deception, harshness, disloyalty, and hate. Where beauty is stripped to a core, sweltering with shame, regret, and disgrace. Perched nowhere now, even a sparrow to praise the dawning of a fresh morning to. The sound once taken for granted, now replaced with desperate cries But just a song or two reminiscing destructively of how it used to be. Living miserably in the reality of what now would never be. I'm thirsty for just another sip of the future's bitter nectar. I'm hungry for just another bite from the bread of life.
My cup once was running over, now I weep. A glutton fool for the glass is neither half empty nor half full.
Rotting from the inside out, my face stricken by jaded weariness.
I lived a life full of untamed desires that prepared these concrete walls and barbed wire, my bed of current, dwelling street with blue and orange fire now swelling from the infectious results of discomfort and fear. The yellow part of any flame is the coolest by far, yet the hope of feeling even that sensation quickly falls on deaf ears, 'cause right here where I've allowed myself to end, not even a first or last name could separate the faces, bodies, and various tones The tears once wasted and shed before as I complained, still in complete control, evaporate in my tear ducts before they can trickle, burn, and flow, carving hash marks into my wrist, being reminded daily of all the serpents that tempted me, cursing every day I gave in to their trickery.
I became fearful, accepting their lies as truth, and a law to live by as I die trapped like an animal in a zoo without others to point fingers to and hold accountable. Solitude has erased all my misconceptions on life, and I admit I was a bit irrational. I sit as an outcast in this mess hall, staring intensely into a bowl of poisonous self-blame. Resentment and regrets eat my flesh. Now this cell makes my name. I'm imprisoned by letting everyone else decide who I'm supposed to be, believing while running the whole race that they love me, not realizing the race was rigged so that if I did win, it would absolutely never happen again.
Letting people tell me I'm uneducated and unworthy, letting people tell me I'm the 1 out of 3 men to be dead by age 30.
I'm imprisoned by letting myself get tired, by allowing myself to get bored. I'm imprisoned by my own choices.
There was no time in life, not even a second, to stop being true or smell the roses.
For everyone in the world to be equal, who on earth can possibly be the best? Besides, a score is written in red by my name alone for any test. To die here may be in order to gain, however, to have lived without at least knowing love, my whole life and death would be in vain.
