Tile floors are highly polished,
as are the women's demure pink nails.
Badges glisten in counterpoint to
the black line of iron between
bone handles of twin gun butts.
Even silver handcuffs wink
beneath the florescent lights.
Everything passed on the way
to the small brown door at the end
of the hall smells like paper and red tape.
Three women in uniforms
make a sandwich of incarceration.
Two like white bread, hard-crusted
from exposure to harder elements,
and one like rare brown beef
pressed tight between. They walk
through an open air office,
rows of green chipped metal desks,
vinyl-cushioned chairs and people
with old eyes who have seen it all too often.
Here, a secretary wearing too much foundation,
has thick-limbed spiders clinging to the edges
of her eyelids. She looks into a compact
and applies even more lipstick.
There, a disaffected mail clerk pushes
a squeaking cart full of records,
drops bone folders on cluttered desktops,
each with a person inside, folded
in the fetal position, head down,
waiting to be pushed through the dilated
cervix of law and delivered
to the grand jury courtroom.
.
Over there, against the far wall stands a line
of public defenders dreaming of private practices,
hands shoved in front pockets,
briefcases at various stages of rest.
One lawyer--withdrawn, silent, unable to meet
the prisoner's wide eyes, already tucks her
into the closed caseload file--guilty.
He falls in step behind, somber brown shoes
and bone wingtips click as if this is her
last walk to eternity. All stop before the door.
A pair of cool, experienced Moses hands
part the silver C's, and cuffs click open.
She rubs the part of her wrists
that wore the thin iron mask and yes,
there is still blood and bone
beneath the skin.
The door opens on large floor to ceiling windows,
screaming the world outside through the smell
of wood oil and thick glass, shouting the trees,
yelling the blue sky over the gloss of wax,
over bone tiles, green branches tapping a code
of liberation against the panes.
She's missed it all -- hungry -- her focus
like a starving dog's on bones and scraps of freedom
visible behind the cocked heads of twenty-two people
using eyes as antenna for guilt,
but damn-- if eyes could detect innocence,
she wouldn't be here in the first place.
