CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Suwannee, Portkeys, and the Silence Beneath the Trees

Photograph Source: Mike Tilley – CC BY 3.0

When I see my fiancée holding her phone, sharing something that’s given her so much joy, Hulaween at Suwannee, I watch the rosy color come to her cheeks and the sparkle that comes to her eyes like bursts of starshine. The delight washes over her as she gazes at Hulaween pictures and recounts her experiences, how much she’d like to go back. I see it. I want that for her.

She turns the screen toward me. “Look,” she says. “This is Hulaween at Suwannee. I want to take you there. It’s magic.”

Her words remind me of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, a book I read for the first time in the Florida Department of Corrections that transported me to another realm of reality than the one I was living. Even in that moment, hearing her say “magic,” my brain’s already reaching back to DOC. Fuck.

I nod and say, “It looks amazing. Wow, it’s beautiful,” because it does look beautiful. The river. The lights. The costumes. The trees. Somewhere between her words and mine, my mind does a complete 180.

Images of torture, killing, abuse, and Black Jesus chemical fumes rain down on me and slam me right back into that confinement cell at Suwannee CI. I hear Baby Face at my door again, blowing his fucking whistle, screaming, “Eat your tray! Eat your tray!” repeatedly until the shrill sound drills into my damn skull. That feeling shoots everywhere, like a disease. It takes over, even though I can breathe and look like I’m smiling along with her, inside I’m dying. My insides are wreaking havoc on my body and I’m choking on the chemical gas and watching horrible things all over again, denying me what should be an enjoyable conversation with somebody I love and adore. She’s my partner. She’s my world. My only wish is to make all her dreams come true, to see her smiling and dancing and enjoying a “magical” festival.

I don’t want these images or feelings to take hold of my mind. I don’t. Why in the fuck do they remain, even after all the counseling, after all the yoga, the trauma I thought was gone. The realization that it’s not kills me inside, but I still smile with her. I’ve told her some of what Suwannee represents to me, some of the feelings I have about that place. She listens. I know she cares, but sometimes I see the sheen in her eyes fade a little when I speak, and that’s something that haunts me, and her reading these words now would make her sad, because she understands trauma. But I don’t want to dim her joy. I tell her how fun it looks, and it does look fun. It’s something I’d love to do with her. And I will do it, one day.

My fiancée is a gentle, strong, loyal Hufflepuff and I’m a Gryffindor. I’m a huge Harry Potter nerd. I’m like Harry, Ron, and Hermione all rolled into one. I need to be brave. I have to push forward. I must fight my fears, even though they’re scary and traumatizing, though I loathe to admit it. My friends on the inside used to call me a nerd when they saw me reading my books. Sometimes they’d wrestle them from my clutching hands, saying my books were coming between us. I’m a huge book lover. Stories kept me alive.

Inside, I read City of Thieves by David Benioff, one of my all‑time favorite books, possibly my favorite book ever. I’ll never forget reading it in the county jail, waiting to start my ten‑year sentence. The story of Lev and Kolya in besieged Leningrad during World War II, stealing eggs in a city of starvation and shelling, all the traumas they survived, gave me heart and allowed me to see that other people’s stories were far shittier than my own. Funny how that is; reading someone else’s pain can sometimes make your own feel a little less weighted down.

I read The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay and learned that one person’s fight can matter. Peekay’s journey in apartheid‑era South Africa, his time in boarding schools and prisons, showed me how a single kid’s determination, his training, his belief in himself, and the letters and mentors that reach him can change everything. The way the system tried to silence prisoners’ letters in that story reminded me of how real systems work to cut off voices and hope. Seeing his fight from inside those institutions helped me see my own fight differently, and made me believe that what I wrote, the letters I sent, and the way I carried myself inside meant something.

Arturo Pérez‑Reverte’s books became my teachers. Captain Alatriste dropped me into seventeenth‑century Spain, into taverns thick with smoke and battlefields soaked in blood, following Íñigo and Captain Alatriste, a swordsman navigating wars, corrupt nobles, and shifting loyalties. Living through danger with them, the young ward learning the ropes of life, I felt like I was that ward, like I was Íñigo, being shown honor, morals, and values, being given tools I’d need to survive the uncertainty of the life I was living. The Painter of Battles brought me somewhere else entirely, into the mind of a war photographer painting a mural of battles and trying to understand the geometry of chaos, the architecture behind violence. I needed to learn the ropes of life on the inside, serving a ten‑year sentence with very few positive role models at hand. His books and other stories became the trusted voices I’d turn to when I questioned my own inner voice. I even wrote Arturo Pérez‑Reverte, my favorite author, and got a letter back when everyone thought I was bat‑shit crazy. These books showed me men carrying honor and guilt through war, trying to live with what they’ve seen and striving each and every day to be an honorable man even within hell.

The book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was at the forefront of my conscience too. I thought of it when I had food poisoning, locked in a confinement cell, throwing up, shitting, and pissing at the same time. I told them I needed to go to medical, and the officers just thought I was lying, said I was on K2, the synthetic marijuana taking over the prison systems. They left........

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