Who Profits Off The Innocent
The child is always first currency.
Before the ink dries,
before the courtroom coffee cools,
before the television woman folds her careful face into concern,
someone has already counted what the suffering is worth.
The girl with her backpack split open on the evening pavement,
the boy with the shaking hands,
the mother filling out forms
while her mouth tastes like pennies—
their pain moves through offices like electricity.
A man in a tie eats salmon under dim light while speaking softly about liability.
Somewhere else, another man prints flyers, another signs contracts, another builds a campaign speech out of a frightened family’s photograph.
Even mercy has invoices now.
The prison counts bodies at dawn like a farmer counting cattle before weather.
The news anchor smooths her hair and says tragedy with the same mouth that sells mattresses after commercial break.
And the innocent—
God, the innocent— they stand there blinking under fluorescent lighting,
still believing truth is a living animal someone will eventually feed.
I have watched them:
the quiet man at the bus stop,
the old woman translating forms she cannot fully read,
the son who says I didn’t do what they say in a voice
already apologizing for existing.
There are industries built entirely from human fear.
A frightened country is profitable.
A lonely country is profitable.
A divided country is profitable beyond measure.
The innocent do not know this at first.
They think the world is a courtroom,
that evidence matters,
that adults tell the truth once enough damage is done.
Then they learn:
there are people who would bottle another person’s grief
and place it on a shelf if the market were strong enough.
Still, every now and then, someone refuses payment.
A public defender staying late.
A stranger telling the truth when silence would be safer.
A woman placing her hand on another woman’s shaking back in the hallway outside court.
No profit there.
Only the terrible, unmarketable cost of remaining human.
In a world
where humanity is worth nothing at all.
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