Unreliable Witness Poem by Mary Champion

My foolish heart will eavesdrop on my mind.
Blind to the meaning of the words
it can still sense the feeling behind them.
When it is moved by fear or anger,
the familiar echoes of emotion
lead it to parrot some phrase or another,
however inappropriate.
Thus, the heart, fearing something,
abuses the perceived cause of its distress,
castigating it for a sin it never committed.
So, it is that the culprit can justly plead innocence
on that count, and never stop to consider
what hurt it has actually done.