Anything spiritual makes one feel light, and anything complicated, empty or terse makes one feel heavy. This is what I learned among other things about more recent pseudo-relationship, which triggered a wide-scale regression.

Am I even ready for what I have to offer if not ready for what some more capable, well-adjusted folks have to offer?

Do I have enough to offer myself before I spoon it out – leaving myself exposed and empty like a slice of melon all scooped out, consumed in half the time it took to prepare?

I sit here waiting at a men’s correctional facility downtown to see Ramiz and swarms of people crowd in front of me, all waiting to see their friends, relatives and loved ones for 15 minutes.

I watch their children drip ices down their shirts, the colored dyes create a Jackson Pollack painting…while their mothers sit in the hot sun to alleviate their weary bodies if for just a moment.

Birds chirp in the distance outside of Hell. I never thought it possible to hear nature come alive in a place like this, where other creatures are trapped. Grass is scarce but presents a place to sit and play for the little ones. They chase the birds, giggling, not fully realizing where they are or even why. They carry on in blissful ignorance and there’s something profoundly rhythmical to their innocence. The world still breathes life around one of the darkest places on earth.

I silently thank my creator for the sun. It would be so much worse to endure this reality in the rain.

They’re making some announcement I can barely decipher; something about watching children and belongings. So many of them are here…too young to be exposed to this horror but too young to sit at home unsupervised, too. Crime is so sad.

Being around sweet, pure souls feels criminal yet kind in some way – like this place has the power to alter them but they are impervious to its hostile nature and energy, because they play and laugh unaware.

This place has an effect even if it’s subtle – like someone smoking a cigarette in the distance which only an ex-smoker can detect through his newly recuperating lungs. The highest levels of the human soul are suppressed and concealed, locked up as its inhabitants in this hellish abode.

Can one really achieve any kind of growth in a place like this? The Jews did in some ways in Auschwitz. Being cramped and in line with so many people waiting in agony reminds me of the cattle cars. I feel like we are being lined up for something and we don’t know quite what to expect to feel once we enter the lobby and submit our visiting passes.

I am afraid to see Ramiz’s face, to see him caged—it’s something I have only heard him say and seen in my mind’s eye and from all the prison movies and shows I watched, but never thought I would see someone I care about endure.

All I offer is my smiling face, which feels laden with pressure to keep up a positive appearance and mask my true sadness and pain at being subject to this nightmarish existence. I suppress my own sorrow at his harsh sentence and criminal reality. All I offer is a silly sensation of hope of another visit, letter or phone call. News from the Outside.

I spent my last $7 to see him. I didn’t tell my friends and I surely haven’t told my family where I found myself on this sunny April afternoon, a day before Ramiz turns 25.

It takes all my strength to attempt to reveal my happy, lighthearted side; to engender light from the Outside world if only for a quarter of an hour—900 seconds.

But being here is closer to his reality, his life, his pathos, his anguish, his strength, his energy and his mind; and I am not even inside yet but I can feel a thickness grow inside me wondering what he expects upon seeing me, how he’ll react and if it will have a positive affect on him in any way or just trigger sorrow and loss. I pray it’s the former.