Good morning Twitter. Today, Sunday March 29th, is my 34th birthday and I'll tweet if I want to about the urgent need for decarceration at the DC Jail.

I'm a storyteller.

Indulge me, for a few minutes, to read my love story.

THREAD:

This might sound cliché, but I still remember the exact moment I knew I would (will) one day marry my boyfriend --my LO (Loved One) and a man who, for many years, was a best friend.

The moment I learned of his incarceration, I knew.

That gut punch? When I realized he'd been taken out of my life by circumstances I'd accurately intuited -- a series of events I'd predicted, understood -- but couldn't control?

It was the hollow, devastating, heart-wrenching pain I can only imagine a recent widow must feel.

I still remember poring over my LO's sentencing documents at PAUL, the same coffee shop where we'd last met for coffee.

The way my LO described it: "PAUL is my favorite thing that I absolutely love and never think about! Kind of like apple juice."

The first time I visited him at CTF, I bought him apple juice from the vending machine.

We had our first date, of sorts, at a plastic table for two under fluorescent lighting and I made my way back to the jail, every Thursday, thereafter.

One of the women at CTF, whose husband was also serving misdemeanor time, would always crack jokes while we checked in for visit.

"Oh, I'm doing fine here at home!" She'd tell the COs. "You can keep him."

One afternoon a few weeks in, she asked me: "He's your boyfriend, right? The black one?"

And I hesitated a moment before I said "yes" because -- aren't they all?

Literally, a reminder the first D.C. Jail was built as a warehouse for runaway slaves.

For those who are blissfully unaware -- like I was myself one year ago -- our entire criminal justice system was built on black bodies.

It thrives off them, still. With disproportionate sentencing and cruelty borne of bias and a 13th amendment.

Race, inevitably, has been at the forefront of our relationship. I'm reminded of it every time a new CO mistakes me for a lawyer.

That's how Washington D.C -- an incarceration capital -- operates. The lawyers are white. The incarcerated human beings, "inmates", are black.

Related: bias would also have you believe that I, a blonde white woman, am the stereotypical victim of violent crime. My image is seared into our collective cultural imagination and serves to keep these systems alive.

The more common victim is black and ignored by the same.

ANYWAY. The topic of race and interracial relationships is another thread in itself. I guess what I'm trying to say is -- I don't love him merely for, or God forbid despite, his blackness.

Though I've learned -- am learning -- that blackness in this maze of "justice."

The gut punch, though. It was the sound of his laugh and strength of his embrace. His endless rabbit-hole musings about, "can you imagine any fate more humiliating than getting eaten by a bear?"

"Tell my future mother-in-law I say hello."

All that in shackles and chains.

Lest you read this thread as a delusional fantasy -- I have a head on my shoulders and am well aware that I might, in fact, lose him.

We have the ring picked out -- rose-gold morganite flanked on either side by diamonds -- and I'm partial to a ceremony at @AllSoulsUUDC with some rendition of @TaylorSwift's "Lover" as I walk down the aisle in the same church my grandmother married at age 35.

But.

I'm no stranger to the complexities of love and romance, nor am I blind to the challenges of re-entry. I have no legally-binding contract that says we'll get there.

Still, the last obstacle I predicted -- though I can see it now so clearly -- was this.

My LO is asthmatic and is nearing the end of his sentence, but @DCCorrections hasn't released him.

There are currently 4 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at D.C. Jail.

The remaining 12 weeks he has left -- absent compassionate release -- might literally become a death sentence.

When @MayorBowser is asked about this -- about human beings at the jail who may die or become severely ill -- she almost scoffs as if the question were beneath her.

As a third-generation Washingtonian, I find myself asking, who does she serve?

Fun fact: also in one week, by which time the D.C. Jail will presumably have an infection rate on par with Rikers, i.e. the highest infection rate in the world, my LO's handsome smile will pop up on national television.

He's in @KimKardashian's "Justice Project."

Which makes this whole absurd scenario as American as apple pie, really. As a reality TV presidency, blonde hair and blue eyes and Katrina.

I'm just wondering if -- should God forbid his lungs start to fail -- whether anyone will hang on for him the way he has for me.

For us.