No one yelled, “FBI!” before her betrayal barged into your careful routines to take you prisoner,
No knocking on the door, no warning, no accommodation, no time to get dressed
or time for your disbelief to catch up to being swatted as the front door is left split in two
or the home completely burned to the ground or contaminated with forever-chemicals.
Apparently, this assault has been planned long ago, plotted in a CIA safe house,
concealed in your childhood home as if you didn’t know, crying out in the dark, protesting
weakly from the crawl space of self-loathing that you are not the scapegoat or victim,
not the ruse, not the person of interest, not the mark, not the shill, not the agitant,
not the imposter, hiding in plain sight. You were always the sensitive one. the heartfelt.
You never imagined your recurring nightmare would externalize into these restraints,
the chains of dread, the locks of a familiar grief because you loved someone.
And they abandoned you into this undisclosed location of the psyche. Intentionally.
The beloved’s betrayal confirms your complicity, sneers an ICE agent who has been given immunity.
You need to face that this is not a kidnapping, the criminals have zero ransom demands.
They won’t ever be arrested or even charged, however obsessively eventually you document
the injuries. No one cares about the disappeared, an enemy combatant regardless of your intention
or knowledge of the struggle. And claiming your ignorance will never get you consideration.
Blindness Is not an excuse in this legalistic system, says the echoing voice that hates you
and sounds a lot like the shitty things your father thought about you, though they didn’t
always come out of his mouth but oozed from his skin like the stench of his temperament.
Your mother didn’t protect you. Even your siblings know you are an accomplice at least.
Your children won’t care to hear your excuses, if they tolerate you at all.
And everyone will believe the least authentic actors in this crime drama, the amateurs
who love the spectacle and claim they do have signed papers from the court of social media
That makes it your fault for what you didn’t know and for everything painful you will ever discover.