Six years ago... A shitty jail cell in New York...

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he glanced up at the wall. There were so many chalk marks. If he hadn't kept count and the number in mind every half an hour, he'd probably not even bother starting the count again. Three years, two days. The time hadn't exactly flown, but it didn't need to.

It was suppose to wear on you. To beat you down. Pressure you into tapping out or picking yourself up and making more of a go of things. For Joe, it seemed like in his early days he swung from one end of the spectrum to the other, holding onto the pendulum for dear life. His moments in here were a story all unto themselves. One he may even tell one day, if the liquor was strong enough and the conversation called for it.

But right now, he was here again. In the present moment. Away from all the shit. The politics of the yard and the prison system that seemed to be more harmful to the inmates than a poorly handled shiv. It all faded away when alone in his cell. But not just because of the mere lack of others, that wasn't what did it. After a year of smashing his hands against a wall because of the nagging silence, he had to find something else to cope.

As his eyes moved from the calendar directly across from him, they landed on a picture. Two, actually, that were intertwined with one another. He tried to make them look like the were in the same shot, by the way he ripped and threaded them together. The way they passed away, it was as if they were together in that sense. Two hearts beating as one. His father went first, a knife to the stomach. His mother, weeks later. The doctor said hers was from a broken heart. Joe never could fully accept it as he was more into what he could verify first hand. But deep down, he believed.

True love was something he wasn't familiar with personally. He once thought he was. Until she stopped sending back the letters. He'd asked for her hand in marriage, and that was the beginning of the end. Before that they came back rapid fire. The guards and other inmates were on him for it. He would play it off stoically, yet inwardly he cherished it. That was all gone now.

As he breathed a heavy breath, he nodded. To himself, to them. He would always speak to his father as if he was still there. Before prison, his mother would be the one he'd speak to more so. But in a place like this, a soft heart was a danger. A red flag. It became a weakness. The heart wasn't as appreciated here. Not when you walked with demons. That shine placed a target on your back you never could scrub off.

So his father was the recipient of his words. That masculine energy he imagined him responding with, which was always tempered with kindness, just like in his childhood, it was needed. He'd seen too many things in here. Too many scars to count. Physically. Mentally.Emotionally. Spiritually. But this picture, his wise responses whether imagined or not, they kept him strong. And that was the reason he was still alive, he believed. That, and what he was sitting here in the midst of doing.

A hint of a smile presented itself. It usually did after letting his focus penetrate the moment to bring out thoughts of his parents. It was all he needed to return to what he was doing. With a well worn, and somewhat shiv looking instrument in hand, Joe flicked the page over, backwards. His eyes now looked down upon what was sitting roughly on his lap.

A larger than life idea were scribbled on the piece of paper, that was connected to a thick white pad. Many pages were also flicked over before this one. More ideas. Some more detailed than others. Some more colorful, if you'd call them that. He only had the one bit of ink, so the tones were more or less improvised based on letting the spaciousness of the canvas in on the dance.

The thing of it was, Joe was never a well educated youth. In fact, he received none at all. He was too restless. Too much energy that needed a release. Most days he'd spend with his father at the markets. Other days, with his friends causing a stir, and building bonds that would later turn into a local illegal gambling racket.

So the ideas weren't exactly words flowing, that he could read back to himself. They were pictures. Images his minds eye wanted to release. Parts of himself he needed to express. The soul, edging itself out of him through his fingertips, and makeshift pen bits. And on this page, it was the makings of what someday be his legacy.

His boxing days were well behind him. He'd already drunk himself into a few months worth of passive acknowledgement. That dream had left the station and crashed before it got a chance to arrive at the next, burning to a crisp at the intersection of wake the fuck up. No, it was another. He couldn't help but draw something he believed to be majestic. To be a way man could truly elevate itself above all the bullshit and take true flight into the valley of the Kings, and maybe even transcend that space and join the Gods at the peak of it all.

A Boeing 247 took up most of this page. His eyes, and his free hand ran over it. It wasn't as artistic as what some others could draw in here. But it captured exactly what he wanted it to. His imagination. It reminded him that no matter the lonely nights and the rougher days, there was another thing to this life. It wasn't always about the realistic expectations. His father always drilled that into him. To keep his feet on the ground and not let his head float too far into the clouds lest he get stuck there and lose himself.

But when locked in a cage like an animal and treated like one, you wanted to be anywhere else but here. These drawings helped him escape the confines of the bars and hardened criminals that surrounded him. They allowed him to take flight and dream again. And no matter what, he told himself he'd one day fly one. Little did he know what would actually come to pass.

One more look at the Joe Adonis interpretation, that had the wings much further back and more looking like they were flapping, much different than the real thing would look, and he was out of there. His head, back firmly in the clouds. His feet, nowhere near the ground. Just as a God would have it. And just as Adonis would. Ambitious to the heavens and back. A little too much, some might say. But that was fine by him.

With a deep, satisfied breath he shuffled back onto the bed and lay himself down. With the pad on his chest, he closed his eyes. Each night would end the same. He was practically done with his sentence. Merely months left. Which in comparison to what he'd done, and what he'd experience, it was sure to be a cake walk.

A knife wound a year ago put him on this new path, the one of the artist. A bloody encounter with a very unlikely foe, the catalyst. But whatever worked, he would say. They were the words he began to live by after the incident, and what he told himself every morning. And it all lead him here, again and again. As his mind drifted off, he'd be there again shortly. His soul, soaring away on a paper plane.