The closing argument I never got to give

Wrote it out tonight, start to finish, the way I'd wanted to say it in court before the judge cut me off. My notes were a mess of margin scribbles and coffee rings — now it's clean, twelve pages, and it sits on my desk like a stone. Didn't win the case. Didn't even get to read it aloud. But there's something in having it exist anyway, in the exact words, that I can put down at night.