“Time has made it abundantly clear that my ability to exercise patience—or not to—doesn’t sway it in the least.”

Jenny Jimenez and her husband, Jesse, who is incarcerated in Illinois, have found creative ways to show each other love, especially around Christmas. Puzzle filters, nail clippers and Lifetime original movies are involved.

I barely remember my birthplace, Jamaica, and I have no family left there. Frankly, I’m terrified.

After my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she married the love of her life even though he was still behind bars. Then he got sick, too.

“When the van pulls back up to the rear gates of the prison... it's almost a relief.”

“It’s conflicting, I imagine, to hear how someone who once took a life thinks about living a good life.”

“While I went to high school with casual weed smokers and worked at various jobs with weekend coke snorters, I was entirely unprepared for what I’ve seen in state prison.”

Waiting to die, we haunt our loved ones.

“Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

“I’m hungry to make meaning out of destruction.”