Trial By Guilt

She sat perched on high in the high court on a wooden throne with "FORBIDDEN JUSTICE" carved around the curved headboard in Gothic letters not to be questioned. On the wall behind, in the same but larger Gothic letters, "NO TRUTH IS CERTAIN" was loudly proclaimed to be true. As I stood awaiting in the lower chamber, the judge stood up in her long black robes designed to hide what is already known, and she began the sentencing mourned as my trial.
"I see before me a known unknown, persona non grata. So how can I judge you as anything else when Nature has made Her judgement before me? Do you have business here, does the doomed wish to speak? Perhaps a witty comment might do, you think? Something to entice me to enjoy your company. If so, do you believe you can sustain that indefinitely, for life? How much wit is within you? Are you certain of an inexhaustible supply? Or do you wish to keep that dour look upon your face, of which I have no desire to see and if I did your severed head would serve equally well. Or perhaps you wish to make a wry observation upon these proceedings? Do you think that is what I wish to hear? Would that please me or enrage me, you wonder. Do you dare take the chance? Are you having a crisis of conscience and faith? Is it only by crime you can gain my company? Is deceit your faultless ally? May a stolen moment be the only treasure you can obtain? Is an allegation of an unbearably anguishing separation your plea, so that the court may show mercy? Would that be a just outcome for this court: to have you tolerated at best, dreaded at worst? If you should fall into disrepair, is that the court's concern, of your every peregrination through life? Is the court obligated to tabulate the outcome of your decisions in which it had no say? Should the court hold itself responsible to weep over your grave when your death is without notice?
"Each soul assumes feelings but some assumptions are true and some are false. How is the court to determine your wishful thinking and flights of fancy from a true heart? Is such a thing even determinable? Is the court your refuge where you hope to ameliorate your wounds incurred from without, to substitute this life for having none? A person on the run seeks shelter and takes shelter wherever it can be found, right or wrong. Should the court be taken advantage of in this way? Does it exist for your pleasure and convenience? Am I to be at your beck and call, denying my own life, due to the discord in your own? Or do you allege that the sum of two parts is different when combined as one? Is this what you guarantee, an unknowable and unforeseeable outcome that has never been faced? Is your imagination to be taken for reality? Are you so certain of your needs that you yet proclaim them while still breathing? What is the court's obligation to your unproven truths?
"Or is silence your answer? To say nothing and be nothing is your defense? How can the court not be offended when you make no effort? Or are you simply cycling through the various answers you could give, waiting for the right moment to strike, knowing that giving the wrong answer - or the right answer at the wrong time - is equally offensive as silence? Or do you contend there is no right answer, that no possible words or combination of words ever invented could possibly do? Do you believe you have the intellect to make that determination? Or are you accusing the court of a prejudged bias against any words you say no matter how appropriate or inappropriate they may be? Have you come simply to cast aspersions and expect that the court would delight at the generous gift of your supposed insight? Where is this all to end, these speaking-and-not-speaking deliberations? Till death do us part? What offering can you make to this court, which you have deemed your doorkeeper to salvation, with your quivering lip which gives the court such pause? What is the way forward? If you do not know, how can I, for communication is the vein of life."
....
"OK, then, I'll communicate. I'm fucking DEVASTATED and wholly DISHEARTENED without your friendship. I'm FAKING everything every DAY. I acted without HOPE. It's UNFORGIVABLE. You are the KINDEST most INTELLIGENT person I know. I'm SORRY in every way."