bubby-Teresa Terry

I constantly envisioned how confining his cell must be.

Writing every month was my own penance, in a way.

Sometimes my letters were long scrawls about the sports I played or the classes I was taking, but mostly, they short notes to let him know I was thinking of him.

I imagined him somehow affixing them to his cinderblock walls, papering his cell with scenery—a window to the outside world.

I turned to that album page often, but I never removed that picture—not to mail to Timm, not even to hang on my own wall. It was too precious to remove.

Nobody will be winning an award for today’s endeavor, though.

Inside, Timm feigned interest in the museum exhibits—Kurt Cobain’s guitars and lyrics handwritten by Jimi Hendrix—as he followed me around.

Then Timm launched into a solo, his fingers so dexterous, I had to stop playing to watch them.

Her businesslike demeanor hides everything she went through in the past year—surges of a mother’s undying love alternating with overwhelming fear.

“You take the bedroom,” Mom delegates. “I’ll work on the bathroom.”

Scratched sideways in the margin, in a hand so frenzied, only the t’s and a’s are recognizable as Timm’s writing is: Bugs in all electronic devices. Ask Ali for help. They know wherever I go, whatever I do.

His words were so fast and convoluted, I had trouble piecing them together. Bugs, spies, computer, and tracking were the common threads, though.

He made a sound of frustration and launched into a tirade that I think was about no one trusting him.

Now, seeing Timm’s notes in person—pages and pages of poetry, calls for help, accusations, even notes on black market gun dealers—I am grateful for the distance between my home in Oregon and his delusions in Idaho.

Timm said nothing, just watched the center line as we careened toward the rest of our lives