The First Day They Took My Name

I was seventeen when they shipped me off to the max yard in Missouri.

Seventeen. Not even old enough to buy cigarettes, but old enough for the state to throw me in with lifers, gang leaders, and men who’d already given up on the outside world. They called it intake. I call it the day they stopped seeing me as a kid and started seeing me as a number.

That number is stamped on everything—mail, ID, even my sheets. But it doesn’t belong to me. Not really. It belongs to them. It’s what they use when they erase your name, your history, your humanity.

They told me to strip. Squat. Cough. Cold tile under my feet, and eyes that didn’t see me—just scanned me like I was inventory. There was no respect. No decency. No one asked if I was scared. Because in prison, fear is weakness. And weakness will get you eaten alive.

They handed me a jumpsuit that didn’t fit, socks with holes, and slides that looked like they’d been through ten other cells before mine. I was told:

Don’t talk too much. Don’t look too long. Don’t trust anybody.

The holding cell was chaos. Some guys twitching from detox. Some pacing like caged animals. Others just… staring. Lost in whatever version of hell they’d been through to land there. I sat quiet, somewhere in the middle—too numb to cry, too young to understand just how deep this would all cut.

They didn’t know my story. That my childhood wasn’t a childhood at all. That my dad introduced me to meth at thirteen. That I hadn’t known peace or safety in years. They didn’t care. They weren’t there to help. They were there to process me like a piece of meat on a conveyor belt.

But even in that moment—stripped, numbered, and discarded—they didn’t get everything.

They didn’t take my mind.They didn’t take my story.And somewhere under the wreckage, they didn’t take my fire.

I didn’t have a son yet. I didn't have a wife yet. I didn’t have hope. I didn’t have anyone waiting for me on the other side. But I had breath in my lungs. And as long as I had that, they couldn’t break all of me.

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