Midnight Ink

 The fluorescent hum of the raid's chaos

swallows the last of the morning air.
Renee sits in her Honda Pilot,
a mother fresh from school drop-off,
reduced to a target in crosshairs,
her heartbeat a glitch in the crossfire
of state-sponsored cruelty.

The Constitution is a moth-eaten shroud
over the eyes of Justice.
It does not reach the Minneapolis street
where a woman bleeds out in her seat.

Instead, a trigger pull in broad daylight
acts as a scalpel, severing the cord between
a human and the right to remain alive.
They value the balance sheet over the Bill of Rights
counting quotas while the pulse thins.

Evidence is a paper fire in a locked room.

The logs are redacted into a midnight ink
and the body cams glitch at the crucial hour.
They scrub the blood from the asphalt and
call it a routine sweep.

ICE is a machine built of rusted gears
that only know how to grind.
It views a woman’s agony as a procedural delay
her wounds as defiance of the operation's clock.

They block the bystander doctor
with badges and barriers
deny the chest compressions
the frantic pleas, as if her fading breath
is just another line item.

They watch the light leave her eyes
as if they are watching a screen go dark-
unmoved, salaried, and hollow-
delaying the ambulance with cordons and commands
minutes ticking like pennies saved.
When did "protect and serve"
become "comply or die"?

Democrat silence is a heavy velvet curtain.
It muffles the sound of the metal door
slamming shut on the discarded.
To sigh at the news is to
hold the flashlight for the executioner.
Outrage must become a hammer
not a prayer whispered in a voting booth.

Her death is a jagged bone
protruding from the skin of the nation.
You cannot look away and call yourself whole.
The dirt on her grave is fresh
but the rot in the halls of power is a century
deep and hungry for more.