Footsteps nearing, punctuated with yells

Metal clasps at my wrists

Ankle chains linking my feet
From solitary he takes me
To this busy room, they don’t hear me.
I did not do it
They don’t see me
I wasn’t there
Sixteen is my age
I will not see my seventeenth year
Kill two old women?
Cut short the life of a child?
Black and white, my story told
Doubled spaced neatly on paper with numbered margins
And through half drawn eyes
I watch the twelve disciples disappear
Arriving hours later, hours too soon
I fold in two on oak
And wait the words of a woman with red hair
Calendar: a Monday, perhaps a Tuesday or even a Friday?
Innocuous days before, but now with such notoriety
The curtains of the room draw
Words evaporate into white noise
As the red-haired woman whispered the decision
Loud enough to overcome
The blood rushing in my ears
Tuesday.
It will be a Tuesday and soon they will kill me too
A needle in my arm, long overdue
Shot with venom, so dark and deep
I will join my victims and forever sleep