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This essay is a 2026 winner of the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize.

The man in blue is yelling at me.

His voice slices the air before my mind can catch up. My body responds first — heart racing, shoulders tightening, breath shallow. I know this reaction intimately. It is older than this moment, older than this uniform. It lives in muscle memory, in skin, in a nervous system trained early to survive authority.

The man in blue is screaming commands, provoking my trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, though he will never call it that. To him, this is procedure. Policy. Control. To my body, it is a return.

The man in blue is searching me.

His hands do not ask permission. They do not pause when my breath stutters or my knees lock. They move with confidence, backed by the state. I am reminded how I was touched as a child — how adults with power handled my body as if it belonged to them, as if consent were irrelevant. I am reminded how silence was demanded then, too.

Mama, They Got Me Too: My Family Has Survived Incarceration Over Generations

The man in blue tells me when to bail, when to move, when to stop, when to stand still. His instructions echo older ones — less formal, more intimate, equally violating. I remember being taught how to perform, how to comply, how to disconnect from myself in order to endure.

The man in blue wakes me up by kicking my bed.

My body jerks awake before my mind does, flooded with fear. This is not the first time I have been startled out of sleep by a man who wanted control. As a child, nights were never safe. In prison, neither are mornings. There is no sanctuary here — only submission or punishment.

Prison does not create trauma in a vacuum. It activates it.

Prison does not create trauma in a vacuum. It activates it.

The man in blue is watching me.

Watching as I walk. Watching as I eat. Watching as I exist. Surveillance is constant, normalized, justified. When I was a child, being watched meant danger. In prison, it is framed as safety. My body does not know the difference.

The man in blue roughs me up and cuffs me while I am already down. My sobbing is muffled, ignored, treated as inconvenience. I am told to obey. I am told this is........

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