The Week Off

They said that a week in solitary would destroy him. He smuggled a pen. At first he wrote slowly, grasping for inspiration, call it writer's block. He could never have imagined that he might cover his whole body with his words. He wrote about what he had learnt from his life. He thought about the specific phrases people had used to make him do what he shouldn't have done. He never used a question mark, nor an exclamation mark; each line was his own wisdom. It might have been harder with his left hand, but he was intelligent and dexterous and it came naturally. The text became smaller and smaller as his pace rose. He slept on his back to avoid smudging his art. On his big toe he wrote, 'this is who I am'. When he was released, he sought a tattoo artist who cut his words into his flesh for ever.