Taste of Salt

His orange t-shirt was pulled up to his eyes, and those dark eyes were wet with tears. The tattooed dots above his eyebrows betrayed his identity. The men in the workshop were quiet. If anyone so much as breathed a comment about his shirt or the tears, the man could spring into a fierce and physical rain of blows. No worries there. The work had spun its spell and left nothing but respect. He had read a long piece about the bitterness of being forgotten, invisible, silent, and, in his words, a ghost. The piece detailed mail call and his ongoing hope that there would be a letter, from someone. Anyone. An old friend, a close relative, a distant relative, a stranger. But they never come. That isolation haunts him. He paces the cell one, two in the morning. Wants to hurt someone, hurt himself. Give up. Take the pill. The bitter one. The one that will turn him to stone, to a pillar of salt. Stinking, bitter salt. But he doesn't. Instead, he lances the abscess with a pen and lets it bleed. He fills pages. The pressure inside him drops, for a while, at least. He finds another inmate to listen to his reading, to hold the thoughts in his hand, his mind, and to taste them for quality with his tongue, like the fine drugs they both have known and sold and fought for. It's good, the friend says. It's good. The friend is one who knows, who has an ear attuned to the music of words. The dragons, hovering outside and in, pause, take a rare break. They wait for their chance to harvest another heart to add to their collection.