I met a man fresh out of prison once.  I was in a bar downtown round midnight.  He walked in and ordered a scotch, then another.  I didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wanted to talk.  You don’t walk into a bar alone to avoid people. 

He got to reminiscing before too long.  At first he wasn’t talking to anybody in particular, then he started looking at me, then before too long I was the only one he saw. 

He told me he’d been in prison five years, but not to worry because he was innocent.  Most people inside are innocent, he said – except, of course, the ones that aren’t. 

Most of what he said, though, had to do with wrists.  He told me people never rub their wrists when the cuffs come off, when they’re thrown in the cells or leaving the system.  Never.  

He saw it happen, or not happen, a lot of times, or so he said.  Inmates just stare at their naked wrists, blank eyes, every time.  Like freedom is a foreign concept, one not to be trusted, quick to be snatched away when it’s given. 

So when they took the handcuffs off of him for the last time, he didn’t rub his wrists.  He just stared at his hands, fists clenched, as if the cuffs still bound him, as if his hands were lead, and he got why people did it, or didn’t do it. 

He finished up his third scotch and grabbed his coat, rubbing his wrists raw.  Handcuffs hurt, he said.  They chafe your wrists like Hell.  Nothing quite like the feeling of them coming off.  Nothing quite like sleeping in them, neither.  Only problem is, now I can’t stop rubbing my wrists.  It’s like I never took them off.  Or maybe I’m still in that moment, staring down, lost. 

He put on his hat, and left to brave the rain. 

I didn’t say a word the whole encounter.  I never asked him what he’d been in prison for.  Figured it didn’t matter, if he was really innocent, and if he wasn’t…well, in that case, I didn’t want to know.  I’d rather not know what he was rubbing his wrists for that whole time. 

– Michael Karpati