The air in here is thick with floor wax

The air in here is thick with floor wax

and the smell of lukewarm sloppy joes.

I carry the brown bag like a heavy secret,

my rubber soles giving a sharp, lonely squeak

against the yellowed linoleum.

Behind the heavy oak doors,

a metallic voice drones through the wood,

explaining the mechanics of a cell

or the dates of a war no one remembers.

It is the silence of a held breath.

A hollow, institutional kind of waiting

where the lockers stand like steel sentries

watching a grown man trip over his own feet

in a place he was supposed to have outgrown.