Your Love is a Song - Switchfoot
Chapter 4: Your Love is a Song
I think the worst part about jail is the exercise courtyard.
Not that I don't like to exercise or anything. In fact, here, you kind of have to. Keeping on your toes is part of how to stay alive here.
It's just I don't like having to be forced to do anything.
They force you to go outside and exercise at least once a week, rain or snow or hail or sleet or unbearably oppressive heat.
First, to get there, officers come, cuff you, and lead you down the sterile halls. Your feet in the regulation black rubber-soled shoes, shuffle, shuffle, squeak, squeak on the tiles. Silver links click, clack against each other as you walk, constantly reminding you of where you are. Hands from other cells reach out, whispering along your clothes, silent askance.
You try to ignore the stares, because that makes it worse, knowing you can't really do anything about it.
You go outside for an hour. Sure, I guess the first few times it's a bit fun, change of scenery and all that. After the first few times, the exercise courtyard becomes downright depressing.
The air tastes like liberty. The sky looks down at you, a brilliant blue painting the backs of your eyelids. You can hear the outside world, the distant rumbles of car engines, the hot wind whistling through the squares of the chain link fence.
If you stay very, very still, you can feel your own heart beating, pulsing through your arteries.
Outside, you can taste freedom, just a few inches away. Just hundreds of razors away.
How pitiful must it look to the outside world, I wonder, to see these dozens of inmates day after day, clinging to the chain links as if they could be their salvation.
Then again, who notices that? Who would want to be reminded of people like me day after day, driving home from work, going home to children, to lovers, to comfort?
And, besides, it's a misconception. Us inmates don't really do that. Reach for the outside world, I mean. At least, the ones used to it don't.
The new ones who have been freshly sentenced still have that unbroken hope, that, somehow, somewhere, someone can see them. That this someone will reach out in return and take their hand to lead them forever out of this place that we now call home.
In my own defense, I never had the intention to do it. But I mean, what would you have done if you had been downstairs repairing the sinks in the kitchen and, all of a sudden, just heard a scream? Wouldn't you have been pretty freaked out too?
I know the law is supposed to be clear-cut justice. Follow the rules. Don't take emotions into account. Don't deviate from the rules. Never deviate from the rules.
But I think that there are extenuating circumstances for every case.
I don't think it's possible to come to a unanimous judgment unless you take every possible moment of that instance and live it for yourself.
Now, of course, that's a bit impossible, isn't it? How could you ask 12 jurors to go out and go through the exact same motions as every criminal? Then you'd have 12 more criminals on your hands.
They say they make it a jury of your peers.
What. A. Joke.
There are three mainstream definitions of peer. The first one refers to someone of the same legal status as yourself. The second one refers to someone you're friends with. The third one is a verb, and means to look narrowly or searchingly, as if trying to find something.
The first two are definitely not true. They don't know what you're going through. They're most certainly not your friends.
Really, they're just the third meaning. They look through your soul, rummage through your precious memories, toy with your emotions, and, at the end, let you down.
I hear you breathing in
Another day begins…
The stars are falling out
My dreams are fading now, fading now…
I've been keeping my eyes wide open
I've been keeping my eyes wide open
Ooooh, your love is a symphony
All around me, running through me…
Ooooh, your love is a melody
Underneath me, running to me,
Oh, your love is a song…
