Evidence of a Crime

‘Evidence of a Crime’

Even if in darkness

they seek an escape,

truth,

like water,

will slip

between their fingers.

For a body that was targeted

is no longer merely a body;

it is a case file,

it is testimony,

it is a history

that sees

even with an eye made blind.

From a wound

we make a lamp,

from bone

a pillar,

from ash

a name,

and from a silent choking grief

a cry

that no prison

has room to hold.

This crime

does not stay in the news;

it stays in the body,

in the mother,

in the city,

in the lost eye,

in a breath that still

remembers the pellet.

And a government

that, in order to remain,

attacks the eyes and lungs and bones

of its people,

sooner or later

under the very name

it had fled

will be written into history:

rule through blinding,

rule through fear,

rule

doomed to fail.