Tom made this bug out of plastic utensils.

Tom’s drawing, pen and ink.

One day recently I was in class at the prison, and one of the longtime lifers spoke up. He said he wanted to read a poem he had written. I was standing at the front of the class as he began to read. This was the first sentence: “I haven’t seen the sunset in 37 years.” I just walked to one of the desks and sat down. I said, “Wait, I just need a minute”—it felt like I couldn’t go on, just holding that knowledge. You see here a pic of The Wall, which many of the men speak of. They can’t see out because it’s so high. So this man was completely serious in explaining that his cell is positioned in such a way that he cannot see the sun set, and he had been in that situation for 37 years.