Mouses and Cookies

When you visit your son in prison, you are going to want to touch the electric fence.
You hope the jolt travels
up the tendons of your hands, gripping wire,
to the heart's pacemaker
converting the nauseating irregular flip-flops
to a beat more compatible with life.

You are going to want to know
where the thousands of men could be hidden
while you walk a path that could be
the surface of the moon
if the moon was silent and blazing with heat and smelled of cattle.

You'd want to have worn the right outfit;
it turns out blue jeans are not allowed.
You can't change on prison grounds so you'll use a mortuary parking lot,
anxious in a different way than the parking lot changes you've done
at the beach before surfing.

Your heat-swollen finger won't release your wedding ring,
but the guard lets you visit still.

You'll encounter impatience at your lack
of understanding
of procedure
while other prisoners' families seem to know
to remove their spiked heels and the sneakers of their children
and place them on the desk for inspection.

When you apologize and
tears spring to your eyes,
brown-clad guys with firearms like jewelry on belts
melt and soften. "Have a nice visit."

You'll be placed at a table
too low for legs to rest under.
A prisoner in blues moves three chairs in place.
All prisoners must face
the front.

You'll sit and watch lovers,
families and elderly parents visiting men.
You'll be too nervous to talk for long minutes.
And then he comes in.

You'll stand and raise a hand
like a hundred other times
at the park or the school yard
to show him where you are.

He'll walk to you
and when you embrace for the first time in two years,
the tears finally flow. He is solid
and real with those
same blue eyes.

When you walk across the hot, desolate moon
to see your son
they'll give you two hours.
You'll talk of small things
and he will express remorse and love.
You'll touch his hands
which is allowed
and buy him Gummy Bears
from the incarcerated vending machines.

You rake over him with a mother's eyes,
see the missing tooth and the body
that otherwise looks whole,
the face so young and the tattoos like armor.
One you notice when he turns his head,
nape of neck,
"Sorry Mama".

You'll wish tattoos were
something worth scolding him for. You'll implore
him to be safe. To brush teeth.
In your head you are screaming
"just don't die!"
but what you say is a tender good bye.

A slow walk back
across the moon's cattle-shit scented path.
You'd thought you'd go for a run
but the fatigue
is like that after a marathon
or the end of a forty eight hour shift as an intern in the ICU,
all cortisol and bile and deep aches.

Next day you will run
eighteen miles in a town you don't know,
past nice homes and fire orange trees and the
University's quad.
You'll listen to your book and then some music,
folding prison thoughts into the recesses of your mind.
Your water bottle electrolyte tablet
tastes of lemon-lime.

An old man will walk by you
and chastise you for running with an electronic device.
You'll smile at him
and feel your heart break into a million pieces.
You'll wonder if he'd have hurled righteous advice
or rather just locked eyes and nodded to a fellow traveler,
if he'd known your deep connection to the run,
each and every one.
And that you'd just been to prison
to visit your son.