No Dear, Harper Murphy

Blood on the prison cell walls plead poetry. Calking up the unversed cracks tiling his barracade, staining a voice for the man who wasn’t given one. He wrote of many things. Past loves, the passing of loves he’d lost, along with the loss of loving altogether. That loss undoubtedly the only thing he had collected during his sentence.

No letters had come in. No Dear, Harper Murphy stencilled above evenly creased paper proving there was some precision and care put into each consanant and vowel curved and dotted. Nothing to make the day shrink. And that’s why Harper scraped his fingers bloody. That opening of the vessels helped give him closure. 

Embers sparked nuerotic flickers of Harper’s past. A slit wire gone hay wet, combusting across the ghosted paths of odorless gases, a soon to be Mrs. Murphy devolving into soot. He would’ve been in the looney bin if Hell wasn’t taking him first, or Heaven presuming his court conjectures weren’t false. Only Lord knows. The security guard clanked a pair of cuffs, “Harper Murphy, it’s time.”