Rating: PG13Length: One hundred words. Summary: The quality of mercy is not strained.

My brother has been isolated for twenty years; some others longer than that. The drugs are the worst: they keep them from becoming insane. Prisoners cannot leave their cells, not even into their own minds.

Second worst is the world-class medical care. They get treatments they would be unable to afford outside prison. Unless you have looked into how good they are, how fast they are improving, you won't understand the sophisticated cruelty in that.

We don't ask for their life sentences to be commuted — we just keep begging for them to be allowed to die.

.finis.