At night, I lay on my bunk and will myself into optimism. After parrying a barrage of shame, I trudge my way through a torrent of regret. Soon after, I engage in an uphill battle against depression. Inevitably, I find myself entertaining a swarm of what ifs. Like constellations in the sky of my mind, they each carry their own mythology. Like stars in the night, they are as beautiful as they are distant.

 

 

I was almost in love before my incarceration. I was almost a father. And I was almost a dead man. I was living on the brink of so many possible outcomes that I couldn't foresee the one that would manifest itself. Now, as I linger on the other side of disaster, I can't help but imagine what could have been.

 

 

How do you maintain love from a distance? Looking back, I think it may have been the distance that kept us intrigued. It was the cliché of absence making the heart grow fonder bringing excitement to each rendezvous. It was the distance that made each phone call an event. Prison is a different kind of distance. It intrudes on intimacy and distorts empathy. Prison made each visit a hassle and every phone call a burden. Instead of absence making the heart grow fonder, it made my mind grow paranoid. Absence became abandonment as the wounds of loneliness scarred into indifference.

 

 

My unborn child would have turned fifteen years old this year. He would have been only a few months younger than my godson, who I have never held or even seen in person. My godson, who is now taller than me, but has only ever known me in pictures, letters and truncated phone conversations. My godson has no idea about the cousin he could have had, but I think about them both often. I don't blame the woman who would have been my child's mother. How could I? Carrying the child of a man who is awaiting trial for double-homicide is not an enticing prospect. Add that to the fact that I was in a relationship with another woman. None of this mattered when I was free. We found the thrill in stealing pockets of time for each other. But a child is a lifetime commitment, and I had a life bid looming over my head. We only had one conversation about our child that never was. We didn't have too many conversations after that. The wall of incarceration became too-great an obstacle for our affair to survive.

 

 

I survived. Against the odds and the law, I am not dead. A life sentence is supposed to mean that my life is over. I am stamped among the irredeemable of society. At 24 years of age, the world had seen enough of what I had to offer. I was sentenced to life and socially dead. Yet, somehow, I live. I defied societal logic and found meaning in the madness of incarceration. It started with knowledge, every book I picked up was like the twist of a Rubik's cube as I tried to put my life back in order. Enrolling in college was like someone breathing life into my body, and every semester was like a chest compression. They say the proper rhythm for CPR is found in the Bee Gees Staying Alive. By the time I graduated with a Bachelor's in Arts, I was fully revived. Graduating summa cum laude, was a great honor and proof that society was wrong about me — I still had a life to live.

 

 

I was resurrected by purpose, and I now live on the brink of possibility. The swarm of what ifs that I entertain reflect my future as I craft my own mythology. Like stars in the night, they are as beautiful as they are real. On this side of disaster, I can't help but envision what can be.