Dozens of case files, stacked but hardly sorted, suffocate the cheap metal desk shoved in the back of the room. The grey office offers no light, no motivation to save the helpless children. It only offers sadness. For in this room, stories of abuse choke the air. The loneliness leaks from the unorganized pile of lives and floods the atmosphere. Coldness expels from the depressing stories printed on paper, and casts fingers to the farthest corners of the room.

The stale air breathes when the door to the destitute room opens. Grey hair pulled into a mess of a bun underneath a clip, falls down in wisps to frame the face of the overweight woman who reemerges from behind the door at the same time every day. Her glasses sag down the bridge of her nose so that she has to push them up with every few minutes that pass by, or if her small head leans down toward the cold desk I have been deserted on.

Feeling the chill as she enters, she pulls her thin cardigan higher on her hunched shoulders and approaches our stack of troubled lives. Our white and black monotony glares at the woman, yet invites her to dare and get wrapped up in the misery of which we are comprised. She gathers her strength and focuses it on making her way toward the desk. Her day will consist of sorting through these mountains of inked snow, choosing which of our miseries are the most urgent, and leaving the rest to suffer patiently. It is not ideal, but there is no choice. The department is just too short-staffed. There are too many files such as myself, and not enough time to read them. Too many family conflicts, and not enough time to resolve them. Too many lives, and not enough time to fix them.

The lady’s office sits in a building. Within that building, forty offices exist just like it; each belonging to one caseworker just like her. On each caseworker’s desk sits over one hundred files just like me, to be eventually sorted and investigated. One person to read and know a hundred backgrounds, histories, and lives. One person with a hundred children’s lives in her hands. But rest assured, each of us will receive undivided attention and assistance in a timely manner. For, each of us represents a mistreated child. We are all the hope that a child has; one clump of letters to represent and advocate for their lives of fear and helplessness. Each file will be a priority. No child will be shuffled under the others. And so, the caseworkers vow.

The woman skims and sorts, without really skimming or sorting. Words blur and sentences become nonsense. Physical abuse? The pile to the left. Mental abuse? The middle stack. Neglect? Far right. Now, half the day is up and what is known of each of our children? No specifics can be recalled, and wait, which stack holds the neglect cases? As she reaches for a pen, her elbow brushes me and sends the papers I possess clattering to the floor. She curses and bends down in her chair to pick me up. “Aspen Jack; neglect” I display. I watch her eyes as they squint and dart from page to page, catching maybe ten of my 10,000 words. Not a high priority file, she sighs, and without another thought, shoves me to the bottom of the far right stack. I suffocate under the scratchy paper of the equally abandoned. My one chance for a shot at freedom is over, postponed to an unknown date, and any inkling of hope I may have once fostered suffocates with me.

Each manila folder on top of me represents another mistreated child. Each folder holds a name. A name which somewhere accompanies a child. A child whom has probably led a damaged life. A life full of suppressed memories, heartache, and grieving. Feelings no one can fully understand, because each person can only know their own pain. Attempts at empathy can be made, but most don’t even try and those that do are simply ignorant in their overly affluent lives. These complex lives, with their own interwoven relationships, tragedies, and tiny miracles, all condensed and summed up into a case file no thicker than an eraser within a manila folder; reside in stacks on the desk of an unknown caseworker.

This is where I lay. Instead of being taken into consideration the justice I plead, I lie in wait under mountains of papers whom resemble me identically from the outside. With no distinguishing features, we mutate into one monster, fueled by pasts of maltreatment and violence. Caseworkers try to fight it, but we accumulate at a faster rate than they can restore the lives we depict.

The children we describe have no power now but, one day, they will be free. If they can just hold out for a little longer, things may get better. Dreams of the future keep them alive. Although they might not be a priority to the state, they know the time will come when they will govern their own lives and it will be more than worth the painful years they endured to get there.

Assumptions can be made as to the severity of each of the cases we describe based on skimming, but protocol is to investigate each claim with interviews of friends and family as well as the child. Family members are called. Excuses are made: “They’re over-exaggerating. They just want the attention.” Pictures of a beautiful home life are painted into the workers’ heads and suspicions deplete. Even as the interviews with the children result in sobbing and recounting their past traumas and current hellish living conditions, nothing can penetrate the lovely pictures. An adult is simply easier to believe than a child. Regardless, an inspection of the home must be conducted. This is your forty eight hour notice.

Phones are disconnected. On one end, a file is pushed to the end of the table and replaced by another folder, identical to the last. A different number dialed, the same conversation revisited. And so on, her day proceeds. From the other line, phones are disconnected, and stories are contrived to be rehearsed. Fictitious stories of fabricated happiness are rehearsed over the roar of the vacuum that hasn’t been used since the last phone call of an equivalent nature, rehearsed in the mind as they drive to the store to stock the barren fridge for inspection, and rehearsed to the children who are then forced to rehearse just the same.

Forty eight hours lapse and by the time there is a knock at the door homes have been scrubbed, food has been stocked, and the children have been tamed with threats and rehearsals, rehearsals and threats. Makeup masks swollen eyes, fake smiles uphold an upbeat image, and a beautiful home is presented. Just like that, you are declared genuine. No longer on our radar, you may do as you please. Inspectors leave, curtains rise, and so the cycle continues.