Saving Rain

by Kelsey Kingsley

This is the part where you probably expect me to say that prison was a slice of hell, served to me on a shit-stained platter. You probably expect a harrowing tale of endless fights, shower seduction, and enough misdemeanors to tack another fifteen years onto my sentence. Am I right? Well, I wouldn’t lie to you. For those first five years, I actually hadn’t hated prison. I didn’t love it; don’t get me wrong. It was far from a walk in the park. But for all intents and purposes, it was better than how I’d lived the first half of my life. I had a guaranteed roof over my head and three meals a day. I landed a janitorial job and started working shifts in the cafeteria, cooking and serving breakfast a couple of times a week. After accepting the fate handed to me, I’d spent the first two years working toward taking the GED exam, and by the time I was twenty-four, I had passed with flying colors. And once I was done doing that, I spent three years taking some online college courses and got a bachelor’s degree in business. In my downtime—and there was a lot of it—I decided to finally take up something I hadn’t had much time for since I had been a kid—hobbies. I quickly found that when I wasn’t swiping shit from Mom, selling in The Pit, or working my ass to exhaustion, I could devour about four books a week. I genuinely enjoyed running and strength training. I had a knack for carpentry, and gardening was something I found a lot of pride in. So, all things considered, I was doing okay...