The Syndrome

                                        

The Assassin:
Dead in prison at the age of 81.

Safe in shadows of time
There were others
Who heard

And saw.
But only silence a response
To desperate cries
For someone to save
Her young life-
Anyone?

Haunting still, that night in 1964

Her escape, a refuge 
100 steps away

Within sight but out-of-reach--
Eternal hope, 
A perpetual paradox.

Brutalized unmercifully
Raped

In an apartment stairwell,

A chamber of chilling echoes 

Recount a body mortally stabbed, 
A Soul wounded
Immorally 

Unimaginable pain masking 
Fear intolerable
She pleaded,

Begging for Salvation 
From a Savior--

Absent.

At the age of 28
Too little,
Too late for

Kitty Genovese.

“All are punished,” Romeo and Juliet, Viii, 315.