Anonymous Innocence by Andrea Young

Loved to death is
the way it was
Silk knives were used, the paper said.

I knew them both,
warm and loving,
happy.
I saw her yesterday, she was pale
and bicycled sickly. She cried
not knowing what’d become of her life.
Charts were scattered before her, plans she’d made
unrealized.

She grips the iron bars, grey with spots of rust insignias.
She held them with both hands. Her shoulders
hunched wrinkles.
Her breath heaved and saliva caught.
Susanna stood there stone trembling staring out.

There was graffiti scrawled on the wall “I was purple,”
and “Jean B. is innocent.”
The room smelled of urine and oranges.