A letter to a friend in the Collin County Jail

Date: March 2, 2020

Dear Copper … I hope you are coping with the reality of confinement as best as you can. I want you to know that I did not forget about you and in particular the promise I made, that I will write you. I have now been in some sort of freedom since Monday February 17, 2020, howbeit limited freedom. Thirty days they ordered with conditions which they know are impossible for me to meet or abide with. They placed me in jail for being broke and poor, specifically for being behind in paying my child support. It is criminal of the court to do what they did to me. Nonetheless, any freedom is better than one second in confinement. I have resolved within myself to savor every second, every moment of my time under the sunshine.

I am certain that by the time you received this letter, most of the familiar faces would have be moved or set free. This is provided you, yourself have not been moved. I want to say that I found your love of reading, love of reading good books with great historical contents very interesting. You read with the focus of an academics, which even made it unusually interesting, in light of the lifestyles to which you have subjected yourself over many years since you got yourself into the unproductive world of drug use.

I need not remind you about the perils of indulging yourself further in drug use. You, my friend I must say, knows all too clearly the debilitating effects it has taken over your life. I will encourage you to sum up some inner strength within you and kick the desire, the need, the habit, and the evil of dependency on drugs.

I will end here by saying, you, my friend, you are a good man, and a very resourceful man. All you need, is to find something that will engage your interests in the same manner as reading does and get yourself engage in it or in them, and you can watch how life will begin to take a new turn for the better.

For now, I am enjoying my freedom, spending time doing what I like, with no one telling me when to sleep, when to wake up, when to eat --- and worst of all, what I can do and cannot do.

Let me just wish you all the best.

           Your friend,

              Michael F