Mock trial

I’ll be a witness, someone sobbing out a Perry Mason
fantasy of epiphanies, a gasp of “you!” and the music

goes dun dun dun, someone should scream, her hand
curled shaking around her throat then up to cover her

mouth, her lipstick is red in my head but the real image
is black and white and intense, bright grey. That’s how

I always think I should have found him, should have
stopped, cue a clangor of discordant trumpets, and scream

but it was more a soft huff of breath, was it out or in?
and lips too numb to do more than stay somewhere

on my face. But now, now I am playing at witness, playing
that a preacher asked for one and I stood sobbing and crying

yes, and there I dashed my name down on the paper, dashed
something down on too real rocks like the children of Amalek

but we are playacting, remember. I am a witness and shall play
at groping around in my memory for some forgotten fact,

a date, a time, when I last saw Jimmy, how I knew George
started the fire, bring it all up and out and set it

before the mock jury as I’ve been instructed as I sat
in that murky visitor’s office, the walls with two red holes

and liquid had rolled out and down and froze, and I
could only stare in horror dreaming that here was blood

more than the spots on my tea towels when he died
when I did not scream, when I did not feel anything

but now I will say that I was just a little angry, here,
talking of Jimmy and George, that I was betrayed, but

just a little bit, by a two-timing man. I can’t help
but put a little Hepburn in, a little smug call out

to Jerry the Nipper. What have I seen? What
did I do? Oh, I will be the greatest witness

anyone in mock trials has ever seen. I will make
a mockery of all of it. Can I get an amen?