By Christopher Blackwell, Photo: Unsplash, The Progressive Magazine, July 28, 2023
The noise in solitary confinement is ceaseless. You’re startled awake throughout the night by the repetitive slam of heavy steel doors and the shrill jangle of guards’ keys hanging from their belts, by the sound of their walkie-talkies crackling through the vast empty space. Once you’re awake, the light that never sleeps takes over—the long fluorescent bulb mounted above you burns bright. You cover your head with a blanket trying to evade its encompassing glare. As soon as you drift off, a guard kicks your door and tells you to show yourself, so they know you’re alive. When you do sleep, the garbled screams of your neighbors invade your dreams.
During the day, the noise distracts you. You find yourself staring at an open book—reading the same sentence again and again, listening to fists beating discordant rhythms against the hard steel doors. Incomprehensible announcements squawk from the loud speakers. Someone’s shoes thud on the concrete floor of the cell above yours, as the prisoner paces back and forth. Someone else is finding comfort in kicking their metal sink next door. There is a steady asthmatic gasp from the ancient, dust-choked ventilation system. Conversations and arguments hollered from one cell to another—the echo bouncing from wall to wall—force their way into your mind and shut down your thoughts. And beneath it all, the bedrock of this cacophony is made of the rants and cries of humans forced to live inside their minds, sliding into a place with no doors, into deep dark holes within themselves.
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