I am sitting on my steel slab they refer to as a bed. I am listening to Sam Smith sing to me about being, “Too Good At Goodbyes” on my player. Prisons allow us to have musical players in an effort to appease our days and simulate the image of comfort. Alike my metal bed, I am having a pretty hard mental day. It is centered around numbers. On 12-28-2001 I entered the DRC and later became 434-576.Today makes my 6,350 straight day in prison. 5-18-19 is the day my sister flew to Las Vegas to marry her boyfriend of 16 years and I was not there to walk her down the aisle. My father is an apparition so he could not do it either. Another number 5-17-19 was my mother’s birthday and with each year her heart grows older and I weep knowing it will soon cease to beat. 93 is the age of my great grandmother. She recently got on my visiting list to see me before she goes to heaven. This is the most ironic number 7,500. Why? More than 17 years ago my family hired an attorney for me and after a few months I realized his efforts were sub par, so I wrote a motion to disqualify him, but he insisted if I did that I would get a losey public defender. So I withdrew my motion and ended up taking a plea. Well on 2-15-19 that same lawyer came to visit me in my prison and stated he messed up in my case and was not effective and that the judge violated my constitutional rights during sentencing, and my lawyer will admit to his misconduct and that will get my sentence overturned and force me to be retried. Here is the irony. He wants $7,500 to do my appeal. I’ve done 6,350 days( that’s almost 18 years) for the crime I committed and I deserved everyone of those days but to continue to be in here more days due to their errors is unjust. My family alike millions of others do not have spare money, so they can not come up with anything close to his fee. Freedom was dangled in front of me and because of four numbers, my anguish persists. So today is a little hard for me to compute. Maybe day 6,353 will be a little easier.

Rapheal Mitchell
DOC #434-576