[Newspoetry] The Innocent

[William Gillespie]

"The Innocent" by Jennifer Michael Hecht

    The knack to almost everything is merely to commit to it, utterly,
    and yet we fail, constantly. Is this commitment, this certainty
    of intention, what innocence was? Let us commit to the proposition:
    Innocence is certainty. You're not sure you believe me.

    You're innocent when you are born.
    You accrue guiltiness. Like lichen? You fade to guilt, like
evolution,
    or topographical gradation. You make decisions.

    Until you are proven guilty, you may keep your innocence. Like a
pet.
    Even before you have committed the crime (if I had a gun, I'd kill
him),
    letters are being sent out to possible jurors.
    It's just the way the system works; they have to keep ahead of
things.
    If you decide not to do it, they will use the jurors for someone
else.
    Among the people presently considering a crime, some of them will
decide to do it.
    On the street outside your window
    the men and women who might judge you are presently walking by.

    You are still innocent.
    Now is your chance to court their affections. Get out there. Now is
the time
    to get in touch with the opinions and predilections of your peers.
In the end,
    it is their decision. Win them over. Consider your life as a
campaign
    for the eventual trial. You do not know
    what you might do at the height of some passion. Prepare now.

    You are innocent in prayer.
    As an exercise, to renew your faith in the legal system, reply by
saying,
    "According to the Constitution, we all have at least twelve peers,"
    when next a friend asks, smoothing her hips,
    if there's anyone left out there.

    Discretion is nine-tenths of innocence. The tenth tenth
    is having not committed the crime. When next a friend asks you
    if you would help dispatch the body of her lover, if it came to
that, say,
    while leaning back in a lawn chair, drinking something cold
    as the condensation douses your hand almost sexually, almost
violently,
    "It is not his fault that he is closed-minded and self-aggrandizing,

    nor is it his mother's fault, though she taught him to do it,

    it isn't his mother's father's fault, though his absences spoke,
    it isn't even the great-grandfather's fault,
    though his meekness wore down the thatch in his cane chair,

    or even the great-great-grandmother's fault, though she drank potato
wine at sunrise.
    It is her mother's fault. Your lover's
great-great-great-grandmother.

    She had free will and chose to use it for evil. She has ruined your
life."

    Someone has ruined your innocent life. Some gesture of your mother,
    tapping her lip with her finger; some way your father looked
    from his school-day etchings marked full of promise and back at you;

    or something handed down in your family, perhaps an inability to
apologize
    or a general distrust, has somehow hamstrung what you were trying to
get done.
    It's no secret, nowadays, that there are no heroes and there is no
blame.
    You may still find love.
    It's all right. Give me the gun.

    You're innocent when you chew. You are innocent
    when your pants are around your ankles, and you stare directly into
the sun,
    and children mock you. They don't know what is in store
    for them: what loneliness, what terrible conviction, what commitment
to what
    unbearable truth.
    Don't be sorry, just tell me the truth. What did you do?

    It is exhausting watching you claim your innocence, aping emptiness.

    Have you even considered the possibility that you did
    do it? Or (more to the point) that it was done to you? Either way
    you are not innocent. You are aware.
    We will make no decisions about love today
    and nobility will go undefined.
    These convictions are not binding. We have lost our knack for law.


    Jennifer Michael Hecht