Stone Yard Devotional

by Charlotte Wood

The silence is so thick it makes me feel wealthy.

I find it hard to stop tears pricking my eyes, which alarms me. It is to do with being greeted warmly by a stranger, offered peace for no reason, without question.

I suppose it might be like this in prison. You look forward to the routines because they show that time has passed.

But I’ve never heard a word to express what I felt and what my body knew, which was that I had a need, an animal need, to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home.