A choir for jailbirds.

The voices, Helena, uncaged, the sound of sun and honey. The words, though adopted from a culture and religion undeserving of their faith, left their tongues like color. I stared at the group while they sang and I inhaled the moment, the sadness of it. I held the coffee in my palm, feeling it get cold while they sang themselves closer to the end of the felony pod, which I was reminded of when a new one in the pod, a black guy with braids in his eyes, a tall, menacing, and annoying jumpsuit, folded his hands behind his head and started winking and blowing kisses at one of the choir ladies, who sang there anyway, ignoring him. He blew some more at her then licked his lips,“Tha’s right, I’m lookin’ at you, boo.” Helena, I wanted to leap out of my chair and slam him to the tiles by the braids, over each of my shoulders to the floor, to feel his bones loosen, to release the anger released by a typewriter session, by a long walk, a climb, a long drive down the coast. A couple of jumpsuits were laughing next to him. The moment changed, Helena. It became a pool of feces wrapped in orange before the beauty of Japanese flowers, azaleas and rainbow colored roses pulled alive and standing from a photo in Aoyama, in Tokyo. I thought about that, the exotic, a sakura shower, flowers whose pet names I would carefully assign by beauty, and I looked back to the voices until they finished. Two C.O.s walked them out, while the food cart waited outside the vestibule. Upstairs to grab spoons, waiting by the rail, called down, then at the tables looking at the same shit from every Sunday.