Tick, tock, clock sounds like water dripping. I'm hurting. Inside and out, physically and emotionally. A person like me has no allies, no rights. Law is irrelevant. If they want to beat me, they do. The blows and the words come together - thud, 'paedo', thud, 'pervert', thud, 'degenerate'. They pretend it's in revenge for my 'abuse' of my 'victim', and there's no point in trying to argue against their spurious certitude, no point in suggesting that they ask him whether he feels abused or victimised, because what's really happening is that they are exercising their power over me because they can. Institutionalised sadism, nothing more, nothing less. I feel inclined to fight back, even though I know that they would almost certainly use my resistance as an excuse to kill me, but I restrain myself, not from fear, but from love. If I die, I know he'll blame himself. I told him, when it all began to unravel, that he owed me nothing, no love, no loyalty, no pain, no tears. I knew I would be seen as the one to blame, and, in the eyes of the world, I am. No reason for him to take any burden upon himself, because I would never place any on him. He's already given me everything I could ever have wanted, love and life and delight, hugs and kisses and caresses, nothing, not pain or humiliation or even death can take any of that away. I have a reservoir of joy that I can dip into whenever I like, even when the fists are flying. The pictures in my head and in my heart are only a pale substitute for the radiance of holding him in my arms, but even that pallor outshines everything else in my world. His face is always there in my mind, like sunlight through the trees, if I let my eyelids close I can see a photograph album in my head, the fair hair, lapping against his collar, the grey-green of his eyes, the pink plumpness of his lips, the tiny, almost imperceptible cleft in his chin, the strawberries and cream of his skin, the willowy slenderness of his body, all captured indelibly, incorruptibly, unforgettably. You might think, officer, that you can break me, but as long as I can draw breath, I'll have my armour made of love to protect me. My friends, my family will desert me, disown me, not prepared for my guilt to rub off onto them, but my boy, my love, will always be with me, even if I live to be 100 and he's drawing his own pension, he'll still be immortalised in my head, still be my darling boy. Here they come again, I'm going to cling to him, love you, love you, love you.
Thud.
****
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
