Prison During COVID: Part Two
What followed was slower, quieter, and in many ways worse.
The days stopped having names once the lockdown became permanent.
We were sealed inside our pod with no warning and no timeline. The doors stayed shut. The air grew stale. Time stretched in ways I did not know were possible. The only thing that moved was the food cart, pushed by guards who looked angry just having to be there.
By the time the trays reached us, the food was cold and barely edible. Commissary was gone. Hunger became normal. Nobody explained anything. We were expected to endure it.
Guards began writing tickets for anything: standing the wrong way, speaking up, moving too slowly. It felt less about rules and more about reminding us of who had control. It all depended on who was working and how they felt that day.
Then came the testing.
Groups of us were pulled aside and told we had COVID, whether we felt sick or not. We moved into another pod and were locked down again. A doctor might walk through once a day, hand out water and disappear. Fourteen days later, we were sent back, only for the rest of the pod to be quarantined next. It felt like a loop with no purpose except for containment.
Work never stopped. It did not matter if your body was breaking down: kitchens stayed running, labor was mandatory, weight piled on, pain followed, medical requests went unanswered. You learned quickly that being sick did not matter unless you collapsed.
Masks and face shields were enforced strictly on inmates. Pull it down at the wrong moment and you were written up. Some men went to the hole for it. Guards walked around without them, as if the rules did not apply.
Medical care became more rumor than reality. Toothaches turned into infections. Swollen faces were ignored. Pain became something you managed on your own or with help from other inmates. Survival meant sharing what little we had: food, medicine, time, quiet understanding.
Eventually, vaccines arrived. Not as a choice, but as an order. Take the shot or face segregation or transfer. No questions. No explanations. Afterward, the pain set in and stayed. There was still no follow up and no care.
When we were finally allowed outside again, it felt unreal. My body was not the same: walking was harder, standing hurt, the sun felt foreign.
Inside, the building continued to fall apart: leaks filled buckets, mold spread across the walls,. mice ran where we slept. Nothing was fixed, only patched enough to ignore.
Through all of it, one thing remained constant. Silence from the outside world.
No visits. No accountability. No one was asking what was happening behind the walls.
We were locked down, worn down, and forgotten.
