I feed her verbs and she spits them into neat rows
Like flowers lining up for the chambers
Explosions of chrysanthemums
A bouquet of blood and shrapnel
Blank men running into gunfire, brains trapped by steel
the chant of the nobody
brutish call and response over and over
I look all along the eye line
Petty torture scattered confetti
The pretty brain loosened
from the skull with a serrated blade
She releases a final breath counting from fear to darkness
A death would prevent the truth being spilled
but her last word is calculated precisely and tears him apart
I am the witness and the painter