The prosecutor
My mouth lays mortar.
My words are bricks.
I build walls of speech
around others,
walls with eyes,
tall walls.
I hide people.
I disappear them.
They’ll never get out
the same.
Nobody will know
they ever existed,
only the wind
through empty streets.
The courtroom clerk
In the end,
all that remains
is paper,
carbon-
copied
minutes,
years
gathered
in a file.
No one will know
whose fingers
typed
those lives away,
only the hands
that signed
and stamped them.
The Neglected Ratio 