Politic.

“We don’t know.”
A calculated answer
to a question
that begged for more.

To answer plainly is to risk position.
To answer truly, to lose it.
So they choose the sentence
that costs least.

Speech thins
until it cannot carry
the weight of its breath.
Not a lie, but something worse—
a sentence they can live with.

And so they learn the cost:
what cannot be spoken
cannot be trusted,
and what cannot be trusted
cannot save.

“We don’t know,” they say.
And in saying it,
they learn what traps them—
not the question,
but the weight of the answer
they refuse to bear.