Double Jeopardy

She looked outside. Gazing past her own reflection in the window. Ignoring the street lights as they tried to distract her from so much darkness. She saw the street speckled orange in the glow. The naked branches of a lonely oak so firm against a barren, purple sky. And she asked herself, why can't I be more like that. Content just to be there. Solid in my exposure. The stars always but a fingertip away.

She wrote her letters. Some terse and others verbose. Wearing her truth in ailing punctuation and misspelled words. As every feeling she'd tried to convey came ricocheting back to her like rogue bullets.

Tagging every trigger. Labeling every moment that judged. Until a jury had been assembled in her mind and the trial begun.

She listened to every argument. From her truths and her lies. And swallowed every hiccup of sorrow as each witness testified.

She knew she was guilty. Though she knew not what of. She agreed there should be punishment. Only she couldn't understand how they couldn't see that was something she'd long ago begun.