I won’t tell you how it ended, &his mother won’t, either, but besideme she stood & some things neitherof us could know, & now, all is lost;lost is all in what came after—the kid,& we should call him kid, call him achild, his face smooth & without historyof a razor, he shuffled—ghostly—intocourt, & let’s just call it a cauldron, &admit his nappy head made him blackerthan whatever pistol he’d held,whatever solitary awaited; the prosecutor’sbald head was black or brown (butwhen has brown not been akin to Blackhere? to abyss?) & does it matter,Black lives, when all he said of Blackboys was that they kill?—the child besidehis mother & his mother beside me &I am not his father, just a publicdefender, near starving, here, where thestate turns men, women, children intonumbers, seeking something more usefulthan a guilty plea & this boy besideme’s withering, on the brink of life &broken, & it’s all possible, because thejudge spoke & the kid says—I did it I mean I did it I mean Jesus—someone wailed & the boy’s mother yells:This ain’t justice. You can’t throw my soninto that fucking ocean. She meant jail.& we was powerless to stop it.& too damn tired to be beautiful.