The Coin

I watch a man die at thirty thousand feet. Meanwhile on another screen, a hanging occurs. The one next to that shows me we fly over Houston, so I send my love down. My parents are somewhere down there, so maybe I’ll spill out of this plane, follow I-10 and hug them myself. See them eye to eye, with nothing but age between us.

An eye for an eye can hide under the blindfold of justice.

What they don't tell you about justice is that it needs someone to believe in it. It needs a people, a coin, a deal. It needs you to agree that the price of a life is another life.

The man on death row will not be permitted to starve. He must arrive at his death in good health. His death belongs to us. We have paid for it.

Why do we always have to make some kind of deal?

I think about the people who did not survive their pain. I think about pain that brings about nothing vs. the pain that takes you somewhere. All pain is kin from inside the eye.

We were taught that harm was personal — that it had your name on it, that it crossed a room to find you. Almost always, it had nothing to do with us. Almost always, the shooter was aiming for their reflection.

I am flying over my hometown and I cannot hug my parents and I do not know what to call that.

Not every debt is settled. Not every trial comes with a verdict. Not every coin belongs to the one flipping it.

Where does justice come from? What survives the reckoning? We are never the same every day. And the soil is always fresh. And the marrow gets harvested anyway.

And still — something in us keeps asking: can we build a world that doesn't need all of our eyes?