Tonight

Tonight

A man sits in a cell with a stomach full of chicken in red sauce.

He stares at the wall.

As I type this, a jailer is walking with an entourage in leather boots made abroad, a uniform made at home and an order from a judge for the life of a man. He will be shackled and led out of his cell to a well lit room with a singular bed that was manufactured in Thailand and flown to the a wholesaler in North America then shipped to Jarratt, Virginia.

He will lie down and an ECG will be attached to him. The nodes and parts that were soldered together by a combination of machinery and human hands will tell a doctor in a room looking at a screen how alive the man is.

The jailer will read the judges order for the man’s death. The paper was pressed in a factory by a woman in China and a watermark was later applied down the road. A judge’s hand pressed against it as the judge signed the order.

John Allen will speak his last words to a group of people in an adjacent room that he cannot see.

A cocktail of chemicals will begin to enter his body through an IV drip. He will  fall asleep, then his breathing will stop, then his heart will stop. John Allen Muhammad will die.

He will die having been connected to countless people throughout the world. He will die as a man. He will die as a man that was judged guilty in a court of law of participating in the the murder of 10 people in the early 2000′s.

These things make me ask… why? All of us, every single one of us are humans. We evolved not so long ago. We are contingent on the world around us… it birthed us. And yet, we fight and kill and “exact justice” against those who kill. Things are a lot more muddy than they seem.

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