You can wake up in a Tijuana jail,

feeling like your life has just become

a bad country song, and look around you

at the half-dozen other young men

in the cell with you, most of them

still asleep but one sitting against the wall,

his eyes on you as you sit up,

flexing your hands and rolling your neck,

stiff from sleeping on the floor,

your head splitting and your mouth

tasting like your own asshole,

and honestly have no idea why you are there.

Sure, you probably drank a lot the night before -

assuming, that is, that you've only been in here

one night -

but what the hell did you do to wind up in

a Mexican jail, a circumstance so ridiculous

as to border on parody?

If anyone had told you that at some point

in your life, you would wake up

"in a Mexican jail", it would have been

a joke. But there's certainly no denying

that the wheels of south-of-the-border

jurisprudence have rolled right over you.

You're in a Mexican jail. A gringo,

with the shredded stomach muscles that are

the telltale sign of having puked everything in

your guts out until you were bringing up

stomach lining.

Were you able to dream, when you were passed out

on the cold cement floor? Were you able to think

of anyone? Sit up in your civilian clothes

and let the cell swim around you.

It feels too late to live within your own heart.

What would they say about you, if they

could see you now?

And yes, when you stand up you feel a

wrecking ball swinging inside your skull,

but you're not going to just sit there all day, are you?

No. You're going to get up and get the hell out

of there and go back to wherever it is you come from

and never return here. So what if the floor

rushes up to meet your face when you try to stand?

So what if you taste the hot metal of your own blood?

So what if gentle hands take hold of you and wash your

disgusting face with a piece of ripped t-shirt dipped

in water from a plastic bowl that every man in the cell

is supposed to share? You can open your blue eyes

and look into brown ones and think,

Among individuals as among nations, respect for the rights of others

is peace.

And don't we all have the right not to bleed from the face

onto the floor of a strange place, no matter what you've done?

And don't we all have the right, or perhaps the duty,

to clean the faces of the stranger, no matter if they deserve it or not?

You can say, in your own words, I don't understand what you're saying,

and you can watch his lips move and hear his voice, soft and furtive,

as though he doesn't want anyone to know what he's doing,

and even though it's true you don't understand

are there not things that can be spoken without words?

If it was Maundy Thursday, you could wash his feet in return

but that would make you Christ, wouldn't it? And He never

got arrested with his dick out behind a border town bar.

You fall in love for ten-second stretches, as long as someone

is good to you. What drove you down to Mexico anyway but

the hope that you could string together a series of ten-seconds?

A night's worth? You went to Spain once and pissed on the

statue of Franco in a small-town square and got your head

bashed in by the local cop. You simply don't learn, do you?

The law exists to teach lessons to those of us

who refuse to learn.

Are you, after all, a bad person?

Or do you just do bad things so you can wake up

in the Byzantium of possibility?

She sways in the warm summer breeze like a sheaf of wheat, her bare feet planted in the spent soil. The moon is just a wink and her eyes have not yet adjusted; she wonders whether she’ll be swallowed by the dark earth beyond the oval of thin porch light, whether it is thirsty enough to open up and drink her down, down. It would be cool in the earth, and firm. Quiet.

The house, too, is quiet beneath the hum of cicadas and the whisper of breeze, but its quiet is anticipatory. Its quiet is a held breath, the suspended moment between booted footstep as they draw near to you: One. Two. One. Two.

The house knows how to swallow her into its silence. Many times it has opened its maw around her, and in eating it always grows hungrier. She can feel it now in the prickle of her neck, can feel the jaw opened wide behind her, the teeth poised to draw her back in and swallow her down, down. She wonders if this time it would crush her first with its dull molars, if this would be the final digestion.

The thirsty earth shivers at her just beyond the porch light, its grains of parched dirt rustling in the breeze. “I’ll drink you down, down,” the earth promises, “I’ll sip you like a glass of cool water.”

Her foot lifts, and then the other: one, two. “Alright,” she tells the earth as she steps into darkness, “okay,” because it sounds better to be sipped. She’s tired of being eaten.

Dear Writers and Readers,

We noticed some less-than-exemplary behavior on Prose today, which forced us to take action against some users. This is a gentle reminder that, while we try to remain as uncensored as possible, some forms of content are simply intolerable. Please note the following passage from our Terms of Service, under Prohibited Content:

Content that is unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, suggestive, harassing, threatening, abusive, inflammatory, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable, or invasive of privacy or publicity rights;

In today’s case, harassment was the keyword. We have taken steps to punish infringing users, and prevent future infringements. Note that we will not be adjudicating arguments, disagreements, or squabbles between users, unless we deem the language used to be grossly abusive or inflammatory.

1. We have added a report button to all posts. You’ll find the button in the lower-right options menu (indicated by an ellipsis icon) of every post. If you encounter a post that violates the Terms of Service, please report it.

2. We have instituted a temporary posting restriction policy against first-time offenders. If we find that you have been harassing folks, spamming, or posting any other sort of Prohibited Content, you will be prevented from posting, commenting, and sending messages for a minimum of three days. Repeat offenders will be permanently banned.

3. We have added an internal feature to remove offensive posts. Posts that violate our Terms of Service, or that provoke grossly abusive or toxic comment threads, will be marked as such and removed after 24 hours. During that period, commenting on such posts will be disabled.

Refer to Section 10 of our Terms of Service for all forms of Prohibited Content: https://theprose.com/p/legal/terms

Happy Writes,

The Prose Team