Darkness doesn't sleep.
It waits.
I thought I was ready for this. I told them I was ready.
But now, alone with nothing but stone and silence, the hours stretch like an endless road. No distractions. No excuses.
Just me.
The walls don't judge. They don't pity. They just are. Cold, unforgiving, indifferent. Like the truth I tried to outrun all these years.
I thought guilt was a weight you could shrug off. That time would erode it, make it smaller, forgettable. But it's not. It's a shadow that grows longer every day, until it wraps around you tight enough to breathe.
I am that shadow now.
No books. No music. No faces. Just memories. Every one of them sharp and jagged.
The look in her eyes when I lied.
The sound of that breaking glass.
The moment I chose silence over speaking.
The one choice that set everything on fire.
I don't deserve forgiveness. Not from her. Not from anyone. Least of all myself.
So I chose this.
This cell is my confession. My sentence without appeal. My prayer without words.
Maybe in this silence, I will find the man I lost beneath the guilt. Or maybe I'll be swallowed whole by the things I tried to bury.
Either way, I belong here now.
And I will endure.
Because the only freedom left to me is the freedom to suffer honestly.