Accused

ACCUSED

          The days go miserably by me like a fog rolling in and out. I've lost who I am in this fog. In and out. In and out. Where does the day end and another begin? Where do I start and end?

         The life of another is destroyed. I can't believe it was I who did that. The blackness of the deed swirls around me in the fog.

         I wish I could begin again. I can't get away from this nightmare - out of this fog. Rolling in and out.

         Please wake me and say it's not so. I sit in my cell.

         "Tomas, time to go."The jail guards bring me places - to court, to eat, to my counsellor. It all goes by in the fog.

         The nightmare reruns in my mind over and over, the unending stream of accusation. The innocent man in red mistakenly taken for a rival gang member, the white flowers he carried for his new girlfriend, the attack, his fall and the blood running from the cut on his head.

         The shock of the sound of his head hitting the pavement just threw us into greater frenzy. The gang leader egging us on and my robotic response of kicking the victim. Why didn't I stop? Why?

         I find no answer to justify my action. How can I wipe out the evil done? I hunger for an answer.

         "Tomas. Let's go. They're waiting."

         Again I move out of my cell in a fog.

         "We find him guilty."

         Of course. What else? I am screaming inside and there is no vent.

         Then I see her. Standing there in pain and yet in anger. It could have been my mother not his standing there. It could have been my body laying in the hospital bed like a vegetable not his.

         A deep rush of emotions churns up from below and swallows me and like lava blasts the vent open.

         "I'm sorry." I hear myself screaming in the distance. "I wish I could die. I can't live with this harm I've done. I'm so sorry."

         I'm being led sobbing from the courtroom. I know it's now a new beginning. The fog is beginning to lift.