Because grief without a task will eat your mind. We fund counseling. We pay rent when funerals empty bank accounts. We keep lights on. We keep rage legal.People send twenty dollars and think they bought redemption. We let them. We need the twenty.
THE WATCHER:
You wrote in your intake that Shae “ruined her happy life.”
JUNE:
Happiness is a fragile ecosystem. She came in like a lion in a garden—sniffed out the weakness, killed for sport. She impersonated a therapist—what do you even call that? Identity theft with a couch. She asked questions that were knives with flowers painted on the blade.
THE WATCHER:
If Shae were listening now?
JUNE:
You didn’t just take a life. You took the version of me that believed in good. You don’t get to rebrand that. You don’t get to make Netflix money with our pain. You don’t get to wear white and call it grace.
THE WATCHER:
What do you want?
JUNE:
For people to stop calling her complicated. She’s not. She wants. She takes. She smiles because it helps. She cries because it sells. I want the rest of you to stop buying.
THE WATCHER:
There are listeners who will say, “accidents happen.”
JUNE:
Accidents happen. So do rehearsals. She rehearsed my grief before I ever wore it.
THE WATCHER:
Anything else we should know?
JUNE:
Someone sent me a clip last week. Audio. Stairwell. A woman’s voice like perfume saying, “Right and wrong are lighting choices.” I don’t know if it’s admissible in court. I know it’s admissible in my bones.
THE WATCHER:
You came on the record today at cost.
JUNE:
Cost is all I have left. Spend it or drown in it.
THE WATCHER (soft):
Thank you, June.
[June’s line goes dead like a door closing gently—finally.]
Segment 3 — The Line That Moves
THE WATCHER (to the audience):
