A Painted Mind

There was headspace for thinking, but the roof sagged low, it restricted imagination. Rooms stacked on rooms, all boxed in. The only way to hear any other part of himself was to drill holes, in the dry walls of dead cells. Nurses attended to his hands and feet, he told them often, that he felt they had been nailed to a crucifix he once found painted, onto a public restroom door. When dead at last, his brain was thinly carved, slices were offered to a holy communion, of private investigators. A much-redacted report failed to be widely published, it could not be read, not even between the lines.