Scavenger Hunt

“Voices like him don’t deserve to be heard,” she said,

her larynx quivering, her epiglottis choking on blank air, 

and yet somehow,

her voice, firmly unwavered, domineering.

Paradox is generous that way;

it lets censorship masquerade as courage

as long as it borrows the right vocabulary.

You’d think that sounds fascist

for someone who spells liberal

in all capital letters across their chest,

but then, 

what’s the point of a revolution

if it can’t be rented out?

It’s a capitalist world,

and even outrage needs commerce.

Bile doesn’t gurgle well

on an empty stomach.

So here she was,

not alone, never alone, 

her fingers nibbling for vengeance

on a man she had already put on trial

months ago.

Because “guilty or not”

is an administrative inconvenience

when the verdict

has already found its audience.

And audiences, 

they don’t come for truth.

They come for theatre.

He had questions.

That was his first mistake.

The second

was assuming questions

require answers.

He had a spine.

That was unforgivable.

The rest

was just process.

Shame doesn’t need logic.

It doesn’t wait for reason,

doesn’t queue up behind grammar

or knock on the door of math.

Shame is parasitic.

It enters quietly;

a passing whisper,

a casual insinuation, 

and by the time you locate its origin,

it has already rewritten your hypothalamus.

You are still you —

technically.

Skin. Bone.

A functioning silhouette.

But gather enough whispers

and you begin to resemble

a graveyard

that forgot to die properly.

And what better sight for eyes

that have grown contempt for eyelashes?

Dress it up.

Black mascara.

Call it reclamation.

Call it resistance.

Call it whatever helps you

sleep through the echo.

And if anyone dares question

the appetite, 

you don’t answer.

You multiply.

Because vultures don’t hunt alone.

They gather.

They circle.

They inherit altitude

and call it perspective.

Stand still long enough

and they will mistake

your refusal

for surrender.

Peck.

Probe.

Persist.

Not out of hunger, 

but certainty.

Certainty is the sharpest beak.

Every once in a while, though,

a man refuses to rot on cue.

Ashen,

but not stained.

Silent,

but not submissive.

A spine

that does not recognise

the authority of noise.

The man on trial

was one of them.

Not trial by fire.

Not trial by fact.

Not even trial by conflict.

Trial by humiliation.

Because humiliation scales.

It travels faster than evidence.

And it leaves no fingerprints

on the hands that distribute it.

She gathered her voices;

not sisters, not allies, 

voices.

Because plurality

is the easiest way

to counterfeit truth.

Repeat a wound often enough,

and it stops needing a body.

Repeat an accusation often enough,

and it starts resembling memory.

They moved:

door to door,

tongue to tongue;

telling stories

of his disrespect,

his defiance,

his disobedience.

Misogyny, they named it.

Because words,

once emptied of definition,

and hollowed of meaning, 

become containers.

And containers, 

you can fill with anything.

Disgust.

Hatred.

Rage.

All of it fits.

And once it fits, 

it convicts.

In a land allergic to evidence,

volume becomes virtue.

The loudest wail

earns the cleanest halo.

And halos, 

like everything else, 

are easier to manufacture

than to deserve.

Death, after all,

is food for vultures.

But shame, 

shame is cultivation.

You don’t kill the body.

You salt the soil.

Make sure nothing grows again;

not doubt,

not dissent,

and most importantly, 

never the audacity

to ask “why.”