A Space Between
The figure sits in a green-walled room under a single bare bulb, the kind of room designed to make a person confess to something. He is wearing a red ski mask crowned in pom-poms the color of every piñata that ever broke open at a birthday party, and pearls, layered at the throat like a question the room was not prepared to ask. The interrogation room expects a particular kind of brown man. It gets a saint instead. The mirror catches him from behind, and even the reflection refuses to flinch. The pom-poms bob slightly. The pearls catch the cheap overhead light and make it look intentional. This is the space between the cell and the altar, between the suspect and the icon, between the face the state was hoping to photograph and the face that actually showed up. He does not explain himself. He adjusts a pearl.