Firecracker Fuchsia

She was a marketer. Her specialty was naming colors. Her calling card became firecracker fuchsia. It won’t be in Wikipedia but everybody has something. She also loved the Counting Crows and collected choose your own adventure books; spent way too much money on this but everybody has something. My vice was collecting felonies…of the arson type. I burned up more than my fair share of abandoned sheds and cars. I ain’t sayin' it was right but I am sayin' they was abandoned and that oughta count for something. We met through a prison pen pal program. To this day I can’t think of how a successful marketer with copper mint in her color naming collection would get involved in a prison pen pal program. I sometimes wonder if it is some part of community service she has to do. Maybe for some sort of misdemeanor arson? Hot. You’re probably wondering what prison is like and if I have set anything on fire in prison. The answer is that the showers aren’t like what you hear, they are worse. Which is why I set an inmates bed on fire in prison. I told her about it in a letter. I thought I was communicating, opening myself up, risking, being vulnerable. She reported it and I got another 3-5 added to my sentence. Just great, another 3-5 years and a Counting Crows Round Here CD. Did she think I had a cd player? What kind of pen pal program puts prison inmates in contact with sadistic sociopaths that send you the lyrics to Mr. Jones? It’s obviously a song about his penis. I’m in prison for god’s sake! I don’t need lyrics about penises or just one penis, singular. I guess I have learned some grammar through the writing class but still. I still think about her. I wish I could reread the letters but I set them on fire. Maybe she’s out there naming a color, maybe it’ll be prison grey.