rats in cages

“Morning! Tea? Cereal bar? Any thoughts of suicide or harm to yourself or others?”

Oh, I’ll just have my usual: my 6th consecutive vegan lasagna in 48 hours. I’ll wash it down with some sweet black tea – I asked for one sugar but it tastes like ten, and now I am all caffeinated and sugared up and bouncing off the windowless walls with nowhere to go. I’m etching ACAB on the walls with my black nail polish.

Actually, there is some sort of porthole in the ceiling (I don’t want to call it a skylight because it’s so opaque you can’t see the sky or the light), and it’s just enough for me to work out if it’s 6am or 10pm. So I read. I read and I eat my fucking microwaved vegan lasagna, coagulated, gelatinous, 39% of salt, 100% artificial flavourings, I get mad happy when I encounter a slice of carrot at the tip of my spork (which I unsuccessfully tried to steal as a memento) as it is proof that vegetables were actually used at some point along the production line. I try not to chew too fast, not because I’m enjoying it but because there’s just so. much. time. to kill. I read until I’m too hungry to carry on, and then I put the book down and seize the spork instead; I balance an equal amount of white and red pasta goos on the spork, I masticate slowly, put the greasy polystyrene box aside to pick up the book again. If I play my cards right, a meal can last me at least half an hour. An officer opens the wicket so half-heartedly ask if I am okay and I ask him to flush my toilet full of piss.

I know I am being held and treated like this as punishment. To think about What I Did. Sent to my room, locked up in solitary confinement, grounded! I disobeyed.

I refused to be infantilised by the State. The condescendence of our political figures, treating us like naughty children when we are the only sane adults in the room.

Sure, I thought about What I Did. And I thought about What They Did too. The police protected the corporations that kill us. They defend, tooth-and-nail, the interests of the few, because fuck their supposed duty of care for citizens. Fuck our right to protest, fuck our right to a liveable future, fuck our right to clean air and land. All hail totalitarianism.