Loyalty

we have forgotten what it means

I made a vow in 2017: I will not curse the outsider.

I do not reference the outsider as sanitized in museum cases, comfortably distant history, or academic-literary theory.

I mean the outsider extant in cultural currency.

That is why I correspond with inmates. A few of whom, it should be said, may be innocent. Most are not.

I do this because I know how it feels to be judged.