I go to prison again.  We walk through the yard, and I can tangibly hear an energy that I don't like, a scrutiny of me to which I cannot respond.  I can only deal with it and maintain forward motion if I walk very purposefully onward, mustering a certitude that I would never say is in me.  Walking and holding it all together in this mode, I find myself ahead of everyone else.  I walk around back of the closest building and enter it in an unfamiliar way.  It's not time for me to be anywhere yet, and I wander.  I walk up and down hallways and see doors like those of the rooms in the house where I myself live.  I see a church; it's full.  I find myself on a landing with another visitor.  An inmate walks up.  Seeing my non-uniformed self and knowing that I am not of this place, he says hello.  He's my age or younger and looks very much like someone I would see around the co-ops -- he's white, thin, has shaggy brown hair, seems kind.  I read his energy and feel very similar to him.  I am not afraid of him at all, and I trust his intentions completely; however, I know that my comfort itself means danger, and the meeting of comfort and fear puts me on edge. 

Almost instantaneously, a routine greeting becomes a transgressive action.  Presumably feeling my kindness as I do his, he forgets what he is not supposed to do.  He puts his arm around me, as much to reach out as to thank me for my presence, and he says, "You're so pretty."  I recognize the gesture in its entirety -- it's so human and innocent -- and I can't help but say, "Thank you," even as I lift his arm off me and move away, mumbling a phrase containing the word "inappropriate" whose message would've been as obvious had I said nothing at all.  He realizes that nothing except the rules are primary in the place we're in,and the rules dictate that he is set apart.  The look on his face as he slinks away without saying anything breaks my heart. 

The next inmate I see, I see almost as soon as I am alone again.  He is passing by, paying me hardly any notice, but I automatically recoil from him.  Without skipping a cadence in speech or step, he says, annoyed but not sufficiently bothered, "You don't have to be afraid."  What a jarring phrase; if only he knew, if only everyone knew, I am not afraid of people, though I am afraid.  I am utterly terrified of shabby and impermeable buildings that contain, of all structures in the world that work to prevent caring communication, of prison.