Dearest Dolores (Poetry inspired by the stories of Eastern State Penitentiary)
Hello doll, it’s been awhile. One hundred days to be exact. One hundred days since my
stay in the big house. One hundred days since I was caged in this concrete box
that entraps the last bit of my soul. One hundred days since my freedom was
swallowed whole.
I guess it’s not all bad. You get a draft and it provides comfort. Lets me know I’m not
numb, my body can still feel something. Remember, when I first met you at that speakeasy. You were wearing that dress and I that shirt you always found cheesy.
Remember the food we had and we thought tasted like cotton. Well it ain’t better in this
place. The food is here is rotten. The water is never cold, unless it’s being
dumped on your head in the freezing weather. You open your mouth just to get a
taste. Can’t swallow though cuz you start to choke, it’s a fucking waste.
Dolores I’m bent out of shape with seeing your face. Day in and day out nobody to talk
to except the guards who just snicker back. They say if we’re left to our
thoughts our conscience will be made brand new. But Dolores baby I’ve got to
tell you that ain’t true.
The only reformation is in the place is when you come here sane and leave whacky.
That damn hole underground with no air to breathe or light to see is infested.
They leave you there and two weeks in, you come out a skeleton with sores all
over your skin.
The noise here is loud. Screams drown out my last thoughts of your face at night. I
hold on to my pillow tight praying for my time to be over. Now we both know I
ain’t no patsy, but come on dollface do I really deserve to be in a place this
nasty!
I wish you could answer me, but we both know that’s something you can’t do. So I write
this letter in vain and as the eye of God watches down on me with a forgiving light.
I keep praying to for an ungodly miracle to reverse this plight so I can have
you back in my life.
Oh Dolores, I’m beginning to realize it wasn’t worth it that night. No matter if I
saw you with another man, it wasn’t worth this bloody fight. I still smell your
perfume on my fingers, the longer I held on to your neck the longer the scent
lingered.
It’s been one hundred days in the big house for me. But longer since your body
hasn’t been found. I still ain’t tell the coppers squat. Hoping that they let
me go with no trace of you lying around. But I guess I’m finished, doomed to
this damn penitentiary to be punished.
The RX Vignettes 