Witness for the Prosecution

Witness for the Prosecution

In the hushed marble of the High Court’s great hall,
a stack of evidence sits in neat piles,
the ripple of a fore‑court transcript
as the judge opens his gavel‑faded estate.

A young woman—hands clutching a scarred card—
steps into the light, the crowd’s murmur still,
her name carved on the blotter by a solicitor’s tidy hand.
She is the eye that will cleave the truth in half.

“Your Honour, I saw the night of the crime;
the lorry arrives before the bells toll,
the scent of diesel hangs in the air,
the dim street, the headlights’ brief ballet.”

Her breath is a tide of earnestness,
a refrain in the choir of witnesses.
Each word a stepping‑stone laid between damp hope
and the stark, unforgiving lens of the Crown.

The prosecutor, a man in crisp Taupe,
stirs the air with deliberate questions—
“Did you see the suspect, sir, or did you merely hear my account?”
The witness trembles, yet the torch of memory burns still.

In the background, the clerk’s tick, the clock’s reluctant tick‑tick‑tick,
the scone crumbs on the mahogany stand—
every domestic detail, a reminder that we are all mere mortals,
standing in the same age‑old hall, bound by the law’s iron rope.

The verdict leans like a blade of grass in the wind—
a slender, fragile thing, yet the witness’s voice
offers the steadiness of a lighthouse.
Her steadiness ensures the charges are honest,
not a glimmer of cloud or fisher’s tale.

And when she is led off the stand, the courtroom exhales,
the gavel sighs, and the weight of the city’s faith—
a quiet consensus, that truth has once again sea‑sailed,
guided by a witness for the Prosecution.