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# Air
- URL: https://www.layersofzoe.net/filed-under-air/
- Published: 2025-10-09T23:40:52.000Z
- Updated: 2025-12-08T21:57:11.000Z
- Author: Layers of Zoe
- Tags: The Follies File, memoranda

*After a True Farce*

The hearing began at 10:07.  
There was a brief delay:  
someone had parked  
in the magistrate’s space  
and left a peach yoghurt behind.

We stood.  
The judge entered sideways,  
adjusting her robe  
as if betrayed by it.

The clerk intoned the case number,  
an incantation.  
The printer jammed twice  
while the facts were being read.

Names mispronounced  
with catechism’s certainty.  
The microphone registered dissent:  
a long shriek.

We were asked to state the matter,

*as if language* –

The testator, eighty-seven,  
signed a revised will  
less than twenty-four hours before death.

The previous will  
left the house to a church.

The new version  
contains detailed instructions  
for the storage of porcelain frogs,  
designates a neighbour  
sole heir,  
and leaves the rest to air.

The attending physician  
did not attend.

Though the surname’s spelling wanders,  
the signature does not.

She was conscious,  
according to the witness – the village solicitor,  
who also sells kitchen tiles.

The witness and the heir  
share a fence  
and a fondness for trout.  
Their pigs are siblings.

When asked why the change occurred,  
the witness referred to ‘a moment of clarity’.  
He did not clarify.

Folders appeared  
nobody had requested.

A photocopy of the will  
briefly stapled to a snack receipt.

One lawyer whispered, ‘Christ’  
when the judge said ‘my courtroom’  
for the sixth time.

We objected.  
Moved; noted for the record.  
She overruled us  
on the grounds that we existed,  
and it was nearly lunch.

I looked around.

The only thing behaving  
as if it still traded in dignity  
was the fire extinguisher.

The hearing ended without applause.  
The public left quietly,  
unsure what they had witnessed.

The docket was last seen  
heading for the car park.

Somewhere, a window banged shut.  
The air had left.

The judge lingered, disappointed  
after such a commanding performance.

Outside, someone had stubbed a cigarette  
against the national flag.  
The extinguisher understood:

Up north, they tried a man  
who murdered seventy-seven people.  
The judges shook his hand  
and did not raise their voices.

Here, we call it competence  
if they keep the pages  
and their patience,

*as if justice* –

While they raised skulls to war cries,  
we wrote the codes, in Latin and dust.

The ink remembers our breath.

Now we mistake the echo  
for the law.

The buildings still stand.  
The floors leak words.  
The record shows no damage,

and it will be cited again.