There is a moment in A Short Film About Killing when the executioner places the noose around a man’s neck, adjusts it, and steps back.
Krzysztof Kieślowski holds the shot.
The cut does not come.
I remain.

The state’s killing receives the same attention, the same patience, as the earlier murder.
No hierarchy of cruelty appears.

It does not ask me to agree.

This refusal is present from the beginning.
A dead rat.
A cat hanging by a noose.
A shrunken head reflected in a rearview mirror.

Mud.
Clouds.
Stillness.

No explanation.

The images arrive without context.
I don’t know where to place them.

Something has already happened.
Or is about to.

The world does not open.
It closes in.

Warsaw appears in fragments.
Empty lots.
Mud.
Gray light filtered through green and yellow tones.

People move without urgency.

The frame narrows.
Edges darken.

It continues.

Then the violence is carried out without release.
Jacek kills a taxi driver.
The driver resists.
He pleads.
The frame tightens.
The body refuses to die.
Doors, seats, bodies press inward.

The body does not yield.
It has to be taken.
I cannot decide.

Cruelty is not observed.
It is endured.
No one intervenes.
No one names it.
If I leave, it becomes easier than it is.
I have to see how long it takes.

I expect what follows to answer it.
To make it mean something.

Instead, it returns.
Jacek is executed by the state.
The body is prepared.
The noose is placed.
Each step is carried out without urgency.

At first the frame is obstructed.
Bars interrupt the view.
Then they recede.

Nothing is shortened.
It is the same act.
Authority does not change it.
It reorganizes it.

If I separate them, I make one of them acceptable.
I cannot choose.

It doesn’t.

Only then does he speak.
Jacek speaks.
His body trembles.
The barriers fall away.
Fear becomes visible.

It feels wrong to see him now.