for Troy
When you were a child,
at least once, maybe often
you were punished
for some misdeed
you didn’t do. You may have been guilty
of something,
but not what you were accused of.
And indeed, while you maintained that you were innocent of the crime,
you were made to feel guilty.
It’s like that, guilt mixed with blamelessness,
bafflement, the horrible injustice of it all
leading to loathing, or worse, blind surrender to power
and it stays with you
and marks all your laurels and fiascoes
from that moment.
Now imagine being at the rope end
of a judicial lynching,
swinging your integrity.
Risa Denenberg is an aging hippy currently living in Tacoma, WA.
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