Imagine you are writing in the dark. You are writing in a darkened room. There is no window, there is no light. There is one naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room. The light bulb has been turned off. The light bulb has been turned off, but It’s of no consequence, anyway, because your eyes have been covered with a blindfold. Your eyes have been covered with a blindfold of black cloth the colour of a hangman’s jacket. The hangman is waiting for you just outside the entrance of the room. If you could see anything at all, you would see the dark shapes of his shoes as he paces back and forth outside the room.

You are writing in a darkened room with a blindfold covering your eyes. There is a blindfold covering your eyes, but It’s of no consequence, because your eyes no longer work after what they did to you during the questioning. Your eyes can no longer see, so the darkness means nothing.

Your eyes can no longer see, and your mouth is covered with electrical tape. Your fingers are bandaged and broken, which makes it hard to hold the pen they’ve put into your hand. There is a small metal desk in front of you. On the desk is a notepad with yellow foolscap paper. Your hand is pressing the pen onto the paper, and you are forming words. You are writing words, and every word hurts. Every word is a symbol of pain.

You are writing words on this paper in the darkened room. You have electrical wires attached to your skin. You have wires attached to your temples, attached to your wrists. You know what they want you to write. They want a confession. They want names, dates, places. They want details that will lead to more details.

They want you to write what they want you to write in black ink in a darkened room with one turned-off light hanging from the ceiling in the centre.

But instead, you write about the moon hanging from the sky. Instead, you write about the way that honey tastes when you lick it from your fingers at the bottom of an empty grave. You write about your son’s smile, the smell of your wife’s hair on a summer’s day. You write about oranges and limes. You write about the dance that your dog does when he’s standing on his hind paws, and the way that light falls from open doorways onto the snow.

You know that when they read these things, they will not be pleased. You know they will not be pleased. They will not be pleased, and they will take further steps. You can imagine the further steps they will take. You can imagine their steps, but you write. You write what you write, nothing more or less. You write what you write, because when you write, the darkness means nothing.