I moved into my holding cell a year ago.

I sat passenger in a U-Haul with tears streaming down my face, right eye hoping and left eye mourning. I wasn’t as fun as I ought to have been. You drove me all the way and we ate bagels when we arrived. 

I signed the papers. I chose an empty bowl, a coaster with teacup teetering and a thin foldable mattress on the floor. I looked around at blank walls, standing shower, mini fridge and sunless window. 

I put my bags down, thrilled for a cell of my own. 

Spring passed with long train rides back and forth every day and you were far away. I made little money. Slowly my possessions migrated from the floors, up the walls. I changed out the bedding from paint covered blanket to white flax and linen comforter and spent too much money on Greek pillows to rest upon. My clothes took order. 

Summer came and I was granted leave from my holding cell for three weeks, a lasting respite from the churning New York day to day. I toiled for your invitation. You showed me how to see and enjoy and I showed you how to dance and feel. I still hear the cicadas though they’re thousands of miles away. Freedom with my invigilator, my lover. 

Illness. Fever. A lump in my side. My cell became a hot moist hospital room. My mother took care of me there. She slept next to me on my folding mattress on the floor and coaxed my kidney into working order, something only a mother can do. Roaches spawned. The parents stuck antennas out of a hole in the molding as I watched through bleary eyes from the toilet seat. Their babies played in water droplets from my sit baths. 

Fall began with promise. A promise of togetherness and new opportunities. Of endings and deservedness. Long train rides back and forth every day and you were far away. You were too big for my cell, so I went to you, shoulders weighed down with luggage. Drained. I tried my best to perform for you. To be as bouncy as I ought to have been.

The weather went from hot to cold in a week. It was time to prepare for the celebration. 

I took us to the opera. You bought yourself another portrait for your palace. I returned to my cell and tried to find pleasure in pain. I was almost there and then nothing. And then cleanup. And then lay there and stare at the ceiling. My cicada shell watched. 

My cell closed in on me with winter’s bone chilling song. A song of togetherness. ties, perfection, promise and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. 

I chose a holding cell built for one. Far away from danger. Closer to what I thought would make me a real person. A person with a goal. I chose a place to wait. I chose a place to wait for you because you held more promise than me and I was just good enough to hold onto. I was just good enough to mold. To mold into a long haired barefoot business woman with a baby on each tit. A disciple who paid the bills. Paid the bills and baked bread, cakes from the eggs in the coop that I built for the chickens I looked after for the man I worshiped so he could work more on his masterpiece and I could keep waiting.

Then you went away. I bought a book that day. 

“My Madeline! Sweet dreamer! Lovely bride! 

“Say may I be for aye thy vassal blest? 

“Ah, silver shrine, here I will take my rest

“After so many hours of toil and quest, 

“A famish’d pilgrim, -sav’d by miracle. 

“though I have found, I will not rob thy nest

“Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think’st well 

“to trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel. 

I found John Keats’ the Eve of St Agnes buried and knew.

I will have sunlight, brighter than before.