I, Witness

If tomorrow they locked us all in jail, how many of us could testify our way out? I’ve been looking at mug shot books all morning and nobody in this whole jury of peers collection looks not guilty. I wonder, if they gave me the book of women, would I find innocence there? And one more thing, why don’t they photograph the one angle I was always happy to see, the back of his head? I could finger this guy, or this one, but they might have alibis. When they found me this morning at the bottom of the stairs in someone else’s apartment building, limbs twisted, the pounding in my head was opportunity knocking. I want this one to stick. The guys I’ve known have all known guys like these; they’ve all done to some poor girl what he’s been doing to me, now one of them can answer, I don’t care which. It can’t matter that this time I truly did fall downstairs. That’s nothing compared to the number of times I’ve let them get away with worse. No one will doubt, to look at me, that I’ve been badly misused. My bones have long memories too, if they care to look. So do cops, apparently, and methods like mine as well. They don’t direct me to the pictures they like, but they know which books and pages to put in front of me to refresh my memory. My eyes are swollen and my hand’s in a cast, so it’s not surprising that my first attempts to point out my attackers require interpretation. Together I think we’ll find the right guys and if we can hurry to the courthouse while I still look like this, I know the good people of the jury will feel my pain.

Copyright © June 04, 2008 David Hodges