Courthouse Dust

By Alondra Reyes
12th grade | South Lake High School | Groveland, Florida
Third-place young adult contest winner, Human Rights category

With lines from “How Data Journalism Is Creating a Public Record of Trump’s Immigration Crackdown” by Jackie Spinner, a Pulitzer Center-supported story

They told us the files were locked
behind heavy doors,
inside sterile rooms
where truth lay censored—
its pulse buried
beneath layers of black ink,
line after line.

But somewhere,
a reporter bent over court filings at midnight,
coffee gone cold
beside a list of names
that refused to stay hidden.

A woman shot five times
became more than a headline.
The paperwork cracked open.
The bullets did not match
the official briefings.
The government’s clean story
dragged muddy shoes across the floor.

And across the country,
people gathered fragments
like broken glass after a storm.

Hearing transcripts.
Arrest logs.
Spreadsheets born from public records requests.
A mother’s memory
carried softly through a bad phone line.

They called it “data.”
Such a cold word.

But inside every entry
was someone buying groceries,
teaching a child multiplication,
waiting in the dark,
hoping the headlights
would pass their window by.

Journalists became mapmakers
for the things the world tried to erase.
They tracked raids
the way astronomers find dead stars—
by studying the light
that lingers after impact.

And when officials insisted
these were isolated events,
the numbers answered back
in columns too tall to ignore.

Truth does not always arrive roaring.

Sometimes it is built slowly
from courthouse dust,
from leaked files,
from neighbors whispering,
we saw what happened.

Somewhere tonight
another spreadsheet opens
like a witness taking the stand.

Another name enters
the public record.

And despite every attempt
to bury it,

history, at last,
is learning how to remember.

Alondra is a South Lake High School graduate. She enjoys playing soccer, spend time with family and friends, and learning new things about medical and law field. She aspires to become pediatric registered nurse.

Read more winning entries from the 2026 Fighting Words Poetry Contest