A PRIVILEGED WITNESS

I knew I would forget nothing about this entire story. Ever.

But when I started a journal, they took it from me.

When I started writing again, they confiscated it again.

Every time I wrote anything down, they took it away. I pissed them off so much.

Finally I was brought before the prison director.

“Why are you doing this, Mr. Maher?” he demanded.

“This is my life,” I told him. “I want people to know what’s happened to me!”

He looked confused, then arrogant. Matter-of-fact, indignant.

“But Mr. Maher, no one can know what has been going on in your life…”

“Excuse me?!” My senses raged. “Well, I’m going to make sure that everyone knows!” I screamed. “You can take what I write, you can strip-search me every day, you can tear my cell apart every day. You can keep me in that cell—alone—in my underwear with that hole for a toilet, and you can leave that light on twenty-four hours a day.

But you won’t break me! No matter what you do, I’ll never turn into some feeble little nothing, lying curled up in a ball, filthy and shaking in the corner.”

I pulled a couple more handwritten scraps of paper out of my shirt and threw them at him.

“Here, take these, too! And come back for the next thing I write! I don’t need to write it; it’s all coming from here!” I pointed to my head—my mind, my memory.

“And that’s one thing you bastards can’t take!”