Michael Seidlinger - The Strangest

But I could have lived a different life. I lived it one way and it might have been another way. This alone seems to be enough to settle the matter.

But the matter is never settled.

It exists somewhere in between.

One time he was waiting for me. I walked over and it was clear that he needed to speak. I tend to be the one that needs more, and I am guilty of this. The Prisoner needs just as much; and I listen.

People should take interest in things. Society needs the attention. Maybe I could have found more of an explanation in those books in your cell.

I offer him the books.

“No,” he shakes his head.

But people should take an interest in explanations. There are convenient escapes within them; they will tell with ease what can’t be told anywhere else.

I stare at my palms, unsure of where he is going with this.

But I listen.

I was right. I am still right. I lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another way.

I ask, “Was that a quote from a book?”

His arms hang limp over the bars, Maybe. Might as well.

He watches as I trace the lines imbedded into my palm, one of them in specific being from a self-inflicted wound.

“Time walks a straight line,” his accent thick.

“And so?”

But there’s nothing else needed to be said.

Night rolls on toward morning. Morning it will be nothing more than grey. And we will follow our routines. We will speak again.

And again — until one of us makes it to the end.

On the dark days, when the clouds hang low and outside it rains. The Prisoner and I stay at the bars. We don’t leave, even when guards and other prisoners glare, passing by to remind ourselves of our roles.

We don’t speak. We don’t marvel at anything in particular.

There is something gentle about the progression of the day and letting the routine, at least this one time, go to waste. I don’t eat anything. I don’t drink anything. I don’t think anything at all, nothing worth remembering.

I smoke cigarettes, every single one given to me.

He often finishes his long before he finishes mine. I worry that he’ll know that I don’t inhale; I puff the cigarettes but let the smoke leave my mouth before they can enter my lungs. Then I don’t worry because it is what it is.

Nothing else.

The routine keeps us and there is almost no differentiation; it feels like one long day. But on this dark day, as we abandon the routine, we see what we see. And it is tragic.

Prisoner told me that I lived a life of tragedy.

I carried enough along every step that I had no escape; there was no escape. I lived in tragedy so long that everyone around me could sense it. The tragedy so caustic, it was how I examined everything I was in relation to others.

Much like we cannot help but do today, examining the disgust and depressing nature of what we must do to keep from letting ourselves go mad in our seclusion, our aloneness, I considered and I counted and I worried so much that worry became the only feeling I had.

I imagine what Veronica might have thought of me.

I was too busy thinking about what people in passing, people I’ll only see for one moment in my life, think of me.

In this moment, this one dark day, I see that I have lived in darkness my entire life. And in some way, it was only after my incarceration that the darkness cleared. I am not satisfied; I cannot be satisfied. I feel no sorrow for the man I killed. But then I also don’t like that I did what I did. I did what I did for the same reasons I never did anything:

I wanted to fit in.

It could be that simple, but I couldn’t see it beyond the situations weighed down on me.

Everything I say and do fades, and even the murder will fade.

The line draws to a close for me and this is where I must feel shame and fear. But I don’t. I don’t hope that there is any other consideration but the death sentence. When the needle pierces my skin, I will be the same person.

In their eyes, I am frozen.

This was the life I lived and, like the Prisoner said, it might have been anything else, but I lived it. The judgment was more necessary for them in order to maintain what they believed.

I didn’t need to judge.

We are all just in our own ways.

That doesn’t mean much either, but maybe.

I give the Prisoner my last cigarette. But he doesn’t take it. It remains on the floor, to be picked up by one of the other prisoners.

The coffee tasted bland but at least the guards gave us coffee. It was something, and something different, almost like a gesture to break our routines. But we already broke our routines. Given enough, we could incorporate the breaking of our routine into the greater routine.

The weather worsened, and it was what anyone normal would define as cold. But I was always cold. Prisoner talked about this.

There is no warmth to be found in these cells.

Prisoner muses, “This prison will fall.”

I listen.

“It falls and in its remains, grass will grow.”

A prisoner passes by, led somewhere by a guard. He glares at me, kicks at the bars. I don’t wince. I barely notice the event.

“Grass grows quick,” Prisoner continues, “and then the prison is gone.”

I sip the coffee, the coffee already gone cold.

“Won’t even see the rubble. It looks a lot like rock.”

I thought about it, what the Prisoner was trying to say.

But I didn’t agree.

He couldn’t put it into English, and I wouldn’t be able to understand his French, so continue the way we usually spoke.

This isn’t liberation. Liberation is already here. It is because we don’t need to know that the prison will fall and that we don’t need to make any better sense of our roles than already instantly clear, that is liberation.

I wouldn’t agree until I actually agreed.

What category do you seek?

I say, I don’t seek any category.

And do you believe that?

I didn’t understand so I said, “No.”

He looks up and down the hall, You don’t fit any category and neither would they. But they have it, have it so that the books have shelves and the people have careers; society has spectacle, and the moment feels bolder. It feels purposeful. It needs to be more than just a moment passing. It must feel momentous.

I used to agree without listening; I agreed so that they would include me in the conversation.

It doesn’t feel momentous.

The Prisoner looks down at his coffee, They will seek to make your execution momentous. Same as mine. Same as theirs. But maybe more for you.

It didn’t make much sense.

It does not make sense.

I agree with him on that, It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t seem to make a difference. Not in the grand scheme of things.

“Grand scheme,” he says aloud. Out of place.

Then I say, The world is bigger than society.

Society is on the world, the world is not the society.

I agree with this too.

The Prisoner looks at the floor, the faded green of the prison block, There was a time when the world existed without society.

I agree, “It might happen again.”

We both agree, but in that moment that there might be something else, we come up empty. It just is.

There’s nothing to hold onto, not unless we give it the benefit of the doubt, the choice to believe in what isn’t there, but might. I would need to hope for it, and that did not look to be here.