The Devil Wrote Nothing

Delaney James

2 min read

·

1 hour ago

I’m writing this as a mother. Not as a writer trying to be clever, not as someone chasing metaphor, but as someone who watched her child be misunderstood in a way that changed him.

This poem came out of an experience where silence was treated as threat, difference was treated as danger, and adults decided a story about my son without actually listening to him. There was no plan, no intent, no wrongdoing. But once fear took hold, none of that mattered. What mattered was how quickly a narrative could form, and how hard it was to undo once it did.

I’m sharing this because the harm didn’t end when the accusation faded. Being “cleared” doesn’t give a child back what was taken, their sense of safety, belonging, or trust in the adults meant to protect them. This poem is for the kids who are quiet, misunderstood, and punished not for what they’ve done, but for what someone else decided they might become.

The Devil Wrote Nothing

They said the devil wrote their names

in the margins of his notebooks,

that darkness clung to his silence,

that quiet meant intent.

But the devil wrote nothing.

He was a boy who kept his eyes down,

new to hallways that already had their stories,

who folded himself smaller each day

hoping he could pass through unnoticed,

hoping survival might look like disappearance.

He wasn’t writing a manifesto.

He was drawing his heart.

He was sketching the parts of himself

he did not yet have language for,

trying to make sense of being different

in a place that punished difference.

He spoke to adults.

It was softened.

Downplayed.

Labeled misunderstanding.

Then one voice caught fire.

A rumor took shape,

passed hand to hand,

until fear moved faster than truth

and intent was assigned where none existed.

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They took his desk.

They took his classroom.

They took the future he had not yet imagined

and called it prevention.

They said it was for safety

as if innocence has ever been dangerous

until someone in power needed it to be.

He was questioned like a threat,

watched like a warning,

removed like a mistake

no one wanted to admit they made.

They carried him through rooms

where truth is weighed by titles,

through papers and hearings

that pretended fairness could undo harm.

They found no guilt to hold.

No plan.

No crime.

But innocence does not rewind time.

Now he sits apart from the world

that decided who he was without asking,

learning early that exile does not end

when the accusation fades.

The devil wrote nothing.

No manifesto.

No threat.

No confession.

Only a child left carrying a story

that was never his to begin with,

trying to remember how to belong

in a place that taught him

he never did.