Entry #32

Entry #32
by Bev Haring


The clang of the steel door and the thunder came at the same time, reverberating on the hard surfaces all around her.

The room offered nothing of comfort. She had given up her valuables and walked in the door with only her ID card and they had taken away every other vestige of individuality; even her own clothes had been bagged and taken, leaving her in the poorly fitting uniform of everyone else in this place.

“Read the rules and follow them” she had been told, and that was the only thing in the room to do. A stubby poorly sharpened pencil was the only other object in the room other than the blanket, towel and wash cloth that she had been given and carried in herself.

She didn’t know how long it would be before she would be able to leave. She had been promised that she would never have to be here in the first place.

Inside her head the storm was raging as loudly as the one outside the walls. “Why did you do it? What were you thinking? How could you be so stupid?” went around and around in her brain.

And as she stood and looked out the 10 by 12 inch window that only looked out on a long, blank corridor she thought how good it would be just to see a flash of lightning light up the clouds behind a humble telephone pole.