The Meaning of Life Without Parole

It is the midpoint of autumn—the time of year when winter begins to crawl its way onto your skin—and night is beginning to fall as I arrive to teach my writing class at a state prison in Massachusetts. On particularly windy evenings like this, the tops of trees sway back and forth. The sounds of their fraying leaves wrestle against one another like the bristles of an old broom along a wooden floor—its old, worn edges bending and breaking as it moves across the room.