Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it is just a different kind of sentence.
The morning I walked out, a correctional officer handed me a plastic bag.
Inside were the clothes I had worn the day I entered.
The jeans no longer fit.
The blouse smelled like cardboard and old dust.
There was also an expired driver’s license.
A photograph of my daughter.
And thirty-eight dollars.
That was what I carried into freedom.
Thirty-eight dollars.
One photograph.
One small bag.
And a name people in my hometown still remembered for all the wrong reasons.
I had gone to prison for armed robbery.
That was what the newspaper said.
That was what the court record said.
It was not the full truth.
But it was enough to define me.
My boyfriend at the time, Cole Harris, had robbed a pharmacy.
I had driven the car.
I knew he planned to steal pills.
