It had gotten me to justice.

And having gotten me there, it had nothing left to do, and so it quietly expired, and left behind not emptiness but clarity, the clean open space of a life that no longer had to be organized around hatred.

That is the ending I would wish for anyone who has been wronged: not that you never feel the fury, but that you let it carry you to justice and then let it go, so that it does not become the thing that keeps you their prisoner long after they have become the state’s.

They are in prison.