The candles always dance. There doesn’t have to be any music playing or a breeze slipping through the slit in the windows. They dance. Whether I’m happy or sad, stressed or laughing without abandon, angry or elated. They move in their own rhythm and their own time. They ignore me but how is that any different than everything else?

I have power over them, though. The power of life and death and when it all comes down to it in the end, isn’t that what we all long for? That ultimate power over another thing. A little flame may not be much, but it’s alive. It breathes, it eats, and it multiplies; if I’m not careful, that is. These three flames are alive because I wanted them to be and they are contained because I wish it so. When it’s time for me to go to sleep, their lives will end with a simple pinch of my fingers, like a gnat crawling along the wrong part of my skin. It’s as simple as that.

For now, though, they dance, completely unaware of the fate that awaits them. I watch them and wonder what they’re thinking. Are they rejoicing in the wonder of life and existence? Are they in the throws of some kind of mating ritual? Or are they simply dancing because they are not me?

I can’t stand this place. I can’t stand this life. It’s dark here, it’s always dark in here. And damp. A dampness that seeps in through the fabric clinging stubbornly to my skin. A dampness that chills to the core.

I wish I had something, something more than this brittle paper and graphite stick. My words mean nothing; they’re not even tokens of a life worth living. I had no home on the outside, no one who cared for me, no one who missed me when I moved on. Outside I was a vagrant, a wanderer, a bum. I was a nuisance and a menace to society. My words meant nothing out there and in here, they mean little more. I suppose I could relish in the knowledge that I can still do things, if only on a transient scale. My thoughts and memories had always been the only things that were truly mine. I wonder in the flickering light whether I should, or can, put them to paper. Will it make any difference once I’m gone or will the reams of pages be scanned with a scowl and tossed into a sack, carried to the stream I hear babbling by, tossed in and carried to sea a million miles away?

It doesn’t really matter what happens to them when I’m gone, I guess. They’ll be like my body, a useless shell, a waste of time. No one will take a second look and they might as well toss them in the box with me when they tip the flame to turn me to ash.

This is not remorse you’re reading. This is not penance or a search for understanding. I don’t give a shit what you think of me. I am what I am. I have taken and I have given, both one in the same but people have an odd way of conveniently dividing the two. Give and take, quid pro quo, scratch my back and oh, hell. There’s no such thing as giving without taking. There’s no taking without giving. It’s an illusion, trust me. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

You give to the church because you expect heaven in return. You take advice because you’ve given grief. You volunteer to take away a good feeling. No matter where you turn, the truth always hides in the most obvious places. You choose not to look.

I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t look either, except for the plain fact that I have no other choice. My mother was a drunk who rarely found time to come home at night. I have no idea who my father is and I wouldn’t speak to him if he visited. I raised myself. School? No, I don’t think so. I mean, how is the table of elements or knowledge of Ferdinand’s assassination going to help me find my next meal? How is that information going to conjure up a place to stay, to hide from the rain? It doesn’t. Another example of give and take. The schools want the kids in attendance, but they don’t really care about them. They’re a bottom line, the numbers that feed the funding. How else can you explain school’s complete and utter failure? I’m twice the age of these kids stumbling through graduation and I can write more cohesive sentences than they ever could. Online lingo and the hip gangsta pontifications of the dimwits in Hollywood, that’s where these kids learn to talk. Schools pump them through. Give and take, remember?

No, I never had time for school. I had enough to deal with just trying to survive another day. I started working when I was twelve. I lied about my age to get a job pumping gas. I’d sift through the trash at the local supermarket for my meals. I’d cash my paychecks, stuff the bills in my shoe, and wait until I had enough to hop a train and get the hell out of town. I didn’t drink. Not then, anyway. My goal was escape. I’m kind of laughing now because I still have the same goal. It’s as daunting and hopeless now as it was then. I did it once, though. I think I can do it again.

Circumstances have changed; my surroundings more formidable. A set of steel bars and three solid walls keep me locked up. One guard on each end of the row never flinch, they never talk to me, and they never fall asleep. I think I’m alone for now, though. They took Dale down the hall a few days ago and that’s been it. No new recruits, no lingering prospects. I’m the last one in here. They passed some kind of law on the outside, some kind of tease just to irk me some more, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care that they’re doing away with it. Once I’m gone, they can feed all the murderers and rapist and molesters they want. I never did understand it much, the debate. So many people crying about how the schools are running out of money, that people are starving in the streets, that the environment’s going to hell, and yet they spend millions to keep these men like me alive. No, I don’t believe that execution is a deterrent, but I do believe it’s a fiscally responsible act. Come on, if you spend a hundred thousand dollars a year to lock up a man for life with no chance of parole and a child starves in the city, what does that make you?

Give and take. You never get something for nothing. I’m not here because I’m a nice guy and that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m here because of what I did. I killed a man. A cop. I didn’t know he was a cop and I doubt that would’ve changed my action if I did. He got in the way and I didn’t hesitate. I told you before, I didn’t get any real education so I wasn’t too slick on the getaway. I don’t care anymore. It was somewhat of a relief to stop running, to stop hiding and hoping that tomorrow might find better moments for me. They never came. They never would.

I sit alone with these words spilling from me. I’ve come circle, I guess. I started out in a kind of cell as my own best friend. I’m still here.

I have to admit though, that the emptiness can draw out like a long winter night. The snows pile up all around and all I’ve got to listen to is the hollow howl of the wind coming for me, seeking a way in. It always found me, too, so I’d move on.

I guess I’m a renegade. Always trying to fill the void. To seal to hole.

Some nights, though, the wind is just too cold.