People think the sentence ends within those concrete walls. 

They don't know that every time I walk through that gate, the punishment begins for me too. I have never committed a crime, yet every week I become a suspect. 

It all begins outside, in that queue on the pavement under the sun or the rain, exposed to the gaze of those who pass by in cars and judge you as if the fault of the one you love were written on your coat. Then you go in, and that metallic sound of the door closing behind you takes your breath away: in that moment you stop being a citizen and become a number. 

The hardest part is the hands on you. Taking off your shoes, raising your arms, letting yourself be felt by cold eyes looking for something you don't have. They look you in the eyes as if you were hiding a dangerous secret in the folds of your shirt. 

You feel small, humiliated. In those moments the uniforms don't see an honest person, they only see the extension of a crime. 

My son made a mistake and is paying for it, but I am serving a sentence for having loved someone who failed. We are half-detained, punished for a love that does not go out with a verdict.

My only fault is not having left him alone in the dark.