Only one person shed a tear.
The woman who wove his bones,
the woman who finally reached out a hand
to flick the switch and silence the machines.
A savage end delivered by a member of the same trade - one dark shadow striking another
all within the high-walled silence of the state.
Even a mother’s mercy had run dry.
She whispering to the air that it was for the best,
given the hollow shell that remained.
And so, the public ledger closes.
We, who paid for the iron bars,
Now pay for the fire and the urn.
A final tax on a devious life.
The man who thought a change of tyres
could wash the blood from his hands.
The man beside who; stood the shadow of a shadow.
a woman of the classroom,
a keeper of children who kept his secrets instead.
She who wore her lies like a second skin,
trading her freedom for a traitor’s peace.
Now carrying a borrowed soul
with a borrowed name,
just a ghost bought and paid for by us; the people,
vanishing into the crowd behind a brand-new face.
Does a case like this exhume our best side or our worst?
When the monster falls,
the old cry rises,
"An eye for an eye - a life for a life!"
The gallows haunt the public squares once more.
For; in the quiet of the heart - the questions ache.
What would I crave if the children were mine,
if the lights of my life were snuffed out in such a manner?
And what of the one who killed the killer?
Does a murder in a cell wash the world clean,
or do we just need another yard rope?
Is the rage of Anthony Russell a different shade of black
darker than the darkness that fired those first blows?
Who could break someone's world so completely?
Who could steal the breath of two ten-year-olds?
The mind is a labyrinth of mis-meshing gears
a fever-fed nightmare of power; pride and screaming ghosts.
It is a cocktail of the conscious and the void,
where empathy is a language never learned,
and control is the only god to be served.
In the end there are no winners in this mess.
A murderer is murdered by his mirror image
behind a locked door in a darkened hall.
All we are left with is the heavy weight of forgiveness - a bridge too far for many to cross.
If we say they are sick - we acknowledge the wound.
If the wound cannot be healed,
then let the walls stay high; bars shut and the locks stay fastened,
keeping their darkness at bay
for all our sakes
and for the length of their natural days.
