Dakina

We're circling the indoor track when I hear birds for the first time in days. The rec deck is locked now because someone had been "fishing"—dropping lines down to someone outside and pulling contraband up onto the deck—but I can still catch a strip of sky through the wired window. In my head I'm humming a Bob Marley song, "Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom," and the birds feel like backup singers.

We'd been up early, like usual. But this morning had an unusual buzz. Nevaeh waved us over, rosary flashing white against her shirt. "Did you hear? Dakina was speaking Hebrew all over the dorm last night," she whispered. "I think it was an exorcism. Dakina doesn't know Hebrew."

"It's our minds playing tricks," I said gently. "Fear does that." She's not really listening to me, but it's 4:30 a.m., so I let it rest. The women here take dark spirits seriously.

There's a line from a teaching I love: Even when you're not sitting in meditation, treat every sound as part of the practice. Dakina's cries aren't random; they have cadence. I'd noticed it in the first few days after she arrived. She howls after disruptions, when the officers sweep through, when the dorm's fear spikes. If you listen, it's like a drumline calling our nervous systems to attention.

She is in here for stowing away on airplanes. She literally tried to hide with the luggage until, after serving two bids for that, she graduated. She found a way to sneak onto the plane, took an empty seat, then any time someone went to the restroom, took their seat without being noticed. Flew from here to Paris that way.