Patrick

Damien studied the table. Patrick thought Damien’s tight-cut hair looked like duckling fluff. Radiators wheezed. Still Damien didn’t answer the question.

“I don’t like to see this happening to you,” said Patrick.

Footsteps tick-tocked in the corridor. Sweat ringed Patrick’s neck. He tried, “Did you have any letter this week?”

“No.”

“And have you heard from your brother?”

“Nothing since.”

“Oh right.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Well. I don’t.”

Coughing echoed from beyond the door. Despite constant voices, the noise sounded wordless. Damien didn’t look up. Patrick said, “I hear they finally got you a bed. Thanks be to God.”

Damien nodded and said, “Frank still has just a mattress.”

“Is Frank in with ye now?”

“Yeah. They had to move him.”

“We must get him a bed next.”

“It’s not right,” said Damien, suddenly meeting Patrick’s eye.

Patrick, as always, found himself searching those eyes like he would a painting.

“No,” said Patrick. “It isn’t right.”

Damien looked away. Patrick put a hand on his to bring those eyes back and said, “You know, there is life after this place.” Damien eyed the clock. Patrick said, “Did you do any more writing?” Damien put a square of paper onto the table. Patrick pulled the folds apart and found Damien’s handwriting:

seal off the mind

take poster eyes gored by Marlboros

hours without place

days without weather

take fight

let walls strip away words

let them speak in tongues

translate scream to psalm

Patrick didn’t understand poetry. He couldn’t say if this piece was good, bad or average. Yet he looked forward to these poems. They allowed him to follow Damien into his secret life, to imagine him writing while the world slept.

“Beautiful.”

Patrick reread the lines and wondered if Damien wrote with him in mind as the reader.

“You have a real gift. Don’t waste it.”

Damien looked sideways and said, “Thanks.”

“I know you don’t like yourself enough right now to think that you deserve better than this, but I just want you to remember that there is always someone who loves you and wants you to try.”

Damien’s lips hovered open. He looked like he was on the verge of opening up. He said, “Did you ever...”

Patrick leaned forward.

“Did you ever think —”

“Time’s up,” said a voice from the door.

Damien said, “I’m going to try.”

He looked Patrick in the eye as he said it so that Patrick felt something like hope stirring within him. He nodded and said, “Good man.”

Then Damien held his hands out for the cuffs. Fresh marks spread along his inner arm. Patrick knew there was no answer. Slop so many men in together, this was the result. It was as contagious and impersonal as the flu.

Damien’s footsteps faded into the noise of the corridor. Patrick tugged at the white collar around his neck, wanting to loosen it, just a little.