As a boy, he was often mistaken for a girl; long brown hair that turned auburn in the summer sun, eyelashes thick, lips full, creamy skin and a delicate nose that wrinkled when he smiled.
Heat would flush his face when the ladies at the bank fawned over him, misguided.
The gnarled hand shook, yellow-stained nicotine blossoms between the fingers. Nails ragged, chewed quick. The anger that never abates.
Buzzers sound and he swings his legs off the cot and stands before the bars. Tendrils of hand-drawn tattoos run like vines across his skin.
All that innocent beauty, vanished forever.