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3065 Redefining Americayears ago. But, leaning against a wall, next to all the other guys talking with loved ones on the phone, I don%u2019t feel like a ghost. I feel alive. Just recently, she told me, %u201cTalking like this over the phone so much, I think we%u2019ve gotten to know each other way better than before.%u201d We talk about how much we have changed. %u201cYou might not even find me attractive anymore,%u201d she tells me. %u201cI%u2019m not the same person I was back then.%u201dOne morning in October, 2022, I had breakfast in the chow hall and made it back to my cell in time for %u201cGood Morning America.%u201d My TV doesn%u2019t have any speakers, so I plugged it into my boom box. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice singing an unfamiliar chorus: %u201cIt%u2019s me, hi / I%u2019m the problem, it%u2019s me.%u201d The anchors on the broadcast were giddy to announce Swift%u2019s new album %u201cMidnights,%u201d and play clips from the music video of %u201cAntiHero.%u201d Swift appeared as a larger-than-life figure, arguing with different versions of herself. I laughed to myself. Here we go again.Our MP3 distributor was always slow to release new music, so I spent a couple of weeks hearing about the album on the news, waiting for my chance to listen. Then, out on the prison grounds, I bumped into a volunteer whom I%u2019d known and worked with for years. We were walking through the yard together when they started looking around to make sure no one was watching. After confirming that the coast was clear, they slipped me a brand-new copy of %u201cMidnights%u201d and wished me a happy birthday. The gesture nearly brought me to tears. That evening, after dinner, I peeled off the plastic and brushed a bit of dust out of the boom box%u2019s CD player. %u201cLavender Haze%u201d played as I read the liner notes. %u201cWhat keeps you up at night?%u201d Swift writes.For the past two decades, sleep has not come easily to me. Often, when I get into bed, I think about the day I was arrested at the scene of my crime. Some neighbors called 911 and reported gunshots. I can still see the grieving family members of the man I killed, staring at me in the courtroom at my trial. I%u2019m guilty of more than murder. I abandoned my parents and my sweetheart, too. There%u2019s no way to fix this stuff.Taylor Swift is currently the same age, thirty-three, that I was when I was arrested. I wonder whether her music would have resonated with me when I was her age. I wonder whether I would have reacted to the words %u201cI%u2019m the problem, it%u2019s me.%u201d Hers must be champagne problems compared with mine, but I still see myself in them. %u201cI%u2019ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror,%u201d Swift sings, and I think of the three-by-five-inch plastic mirrors that are available inside. For years out there, I viewed myself as the antihero in my own warped self-narrative. Do I want to see myself clearly?In %u201cKarma,%u201d Swift sings, %u201cAsk me what I learned from all those years / Ask me what I earned from all those tears.%u201d A few months from now, California%u2019s Board of Parole Hearings will ask me questions like that. What have I learned? What do I have to show for my twenty years of incarceration? In the months ahead, when these questions keep me up at night, I will listen to %u201cMidnights.%u201d The woman I love says she%u2019s ready to meet me on the other side of the prison wall, on the day that I walk into the daylight. Recently, she asked me, %u201cIf you could go anywhere, do anything, that first day out, what would you want us to go do?%u201d That question keeps me up at night, too.202320What do you make of Garcia%u2019s decision to bring up the incident that led to his arrest towards the end of the essay, in paragraph 19?33Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.