Where To Place The Chairs
She had her back to them.
The chairs were arranged that way ... The attorney general faced forward ... The victims sat behind her ... That is not an interpretation ... That is the seating chart ...
A room arranged so the person answering questions about what happened to people does not have to look at the people it happened to ... Architecture as decision ... Somebody chose where the chairs go ...
She defended the president. Passionately ... The passion had a direction and the direction was toward the man who was not in the room ... Not toward the people who were ... The blood went where the blood was sent ... The heat traveled to the organ that mattered most and the organ that mattered most was not sitting behind her ...
She mocked her questioners.
In a room where victims of a pedophile were sitting close enough to hear her voice change when it found something funny ... Mockery requires a kind of forgetting ... You cannot mock in the direction of a question about children and remain aware that the children — who are not children anymore — are behind you, listening to you find this amusing ... The mockery is only possible if behind you has stopped being a place ...
She refused to directly respond.
The direct response was available ... The mouth knew where it was ... The mouth went somewhere else ... Not because the direct response was complicated ... Because the direct response had a taste and the taste was not one the mouth was willing to hold ... The body turning at the desk while the desk stays still and the people behind the desk stay still and only the turning moves ...
And the dog.
The saga continues to dog her term ... Something that follows without being invited ... Something loyal to the scent ... The saga is an animal at her heels that she did not adopt and cannot return ... It followed her into the building the way it will follow her out ... The way the victims followed her into the room by sitting in chairs that were already there when she arrived ...
The chairs were there first ... The victims were in the building before she walked in ... The questions were written before she sat down ... The files existed before she was confirmed ... The saga was already an animal before it learned her name ... She walked into a room that was already full of what she would spend five hours not eating ...
Behind her ... Not behind her the way history is behind a person ... Behind her the way someone you owe something to is behind you in line and you can feel them there without turning around ... Even when the mouth is mocking ... Even when the passion is traveling in the wrong direction ... The body knows what is behind it ...
The dog does not stop walking because she stopped looking ...