It’s hard to know where I am. I am — in fact — here, and I am — in fact — gone. Their eyes are open and shut. This room is full but there is air above me, more air than I could ever need to fill my lungs. Venting in from the outside, the outside. Enough air for my lungs to breathe, enough air for my entire life. But I am not outside. I am here. And I am chained. And there is a key in an evidence bag, and that key led to a body, and that key led me here, and with that key I will be locked away for the rest of the air in my lungs.

“I am not good at speaking,” I say. “I am confused. There is something wrong. But I do not know. I do not know what happened. I have become jury to my own life, I sit with you. And I do not know what happened. Why he was there.” My body shakes and my esophagus constricts. “I know what my outside looks like, but I will tell you inside I am lost. Confused.” I must sit down. I gag at the feeling of my unwet tongue.

There a mother cries. There a juror blows her nose. There my elbow hurts where it was wrung. The air is quiet and stale. Eyes shut and open. Directions to step away and deliberate. Whispers slide next to hot cartilage ears. “It’s almost over.”

His body began somewhere. Next to hills, far away from here. Then to concrete, to iron wrought apartment gates. Friends say he was beloved. Colleagues say he was diligent. He was here, he loved it here, he went here to relax, he went here to socialize, he was found here, dead, gone, her key in the door, her gone, her tickets to leave the country, her envy of him.

Of his success. Of his excess charm. She wanted him gone so she could take ownership of what was his. But in his death I have given him so much. His bruises are mine, his death shroud my bed linens, his death my life imprisoned.

I knew him as Ritchie. Sorry Ritchie, no blueberry scones today. Yes Ritchie, I’ll get right on that. No Ritchie, I don’t think we should. Was that even me? The memories crumble apart in this stale room. I can’t think of my life as things that have happened to me. My life is only here. Born in beige jumpsuit. And when I leave this room I will cease to exist, someone other will take over. Ritchie will be no more real.

Above me the air curtain ruffles. The doors open and the jury re-shuffles. The judge un-rumples his tunic. Ritchie lies cold dead in my head and in the ground under one of his hills. He never told me about the hills. I never knew they existed until now. And yet they must have been in his heart every second it ticked. Grass between toes. Rabbits stared at until they noticed. Clouds casting soft shadows. His world, not mine. Yet his world is now mine, and the jury reclined. And those that talked, talked. Those that were missing work thought about this ending early. I brought my face to theirs but I couldn’t look at them. I looked through them. And they to me. I wasn’t here in ten minutes. I’m here now. His wife’s oily bangs stuck to her damp face. Affirmations exchanged, I am picked up and held, then walked away. To gone, here I am.