Into the Forest and all the Way Through

by Cynthia Pelayo

Before you continue into the forest I leave you with a few more thoughts — we are living with a silent crisis, the crisis of missing and murdered women in our society. There are thousands of missing women in America. There are thousands of women who have been murdered, yet their case has gone ignored, forgotten, cold. For women of color, this is especially an epidemic. Hispanic, Black, Asian, and particularly Native American women go missing at much higher rates than the general population, and someone knows something. I cannot stress this enough – someone knows something. For so many women to go missing each year, year after year, decade after decade means that someone knows something.

These women deserve rest and peace, and the people that took them away from us deserve to be punished.

Before you there, a girl who no longer is a girl, a girl who is bone and moss Leaves tangled within her eye sockets, stretched down to her finger bone

Forgetting to remember your scent, they are forgetting to Remember your name, so I will walk, and I will climb, and I will drive, so that your picture does not fade

Your niece posts Your face online and tells strangers That she still prays

No clothing or personal items were found With the remains. The things they call us After we were flesh and blood, remains, What remains. The cause of death then Documented, written off, as undetermined

The memory of a wife who worked when all of us were Sleeping, and who disintegrated into the glorious golden Morning rays when all of our eyes opened

Police who refused to search for you An adult, they said, who had every Right to vanish, eaten up into a pit Refusing you as a missing person

Not until a teacher found chemical burns on my skin that I Could finally tell the story of the little sister I had and the Demons who threw her away and told me never to tell

Now those three children know the way of Questions, and the emptiness of answers, and The disappointment that when the doorbell Rings or when the phone vibrates in their hand It is never their mother

and you Were seen speaking with him, a former Boyfriend, a former lover, one time there Were good times, soft kisses, and hand Holding, is that why your hands were Taken? Erase whatever pleasure your Body once felt?

what good is checking on your neighbors if you are unwilling to save Them?

And when police Officers finally approached the man suspected in your Murder, in the murder of Elizabeth, and Tammy and Mary, And Rosario, and many more — he killed himself, because That is what cowards do.

Detectives found no trace Of you being inside when The car flew from above If you did not fall, if You did not fly, then Where can you be?

It remains a mystery, they say. But there is no mystery when someone Knows, and others won’t speak,

Since you ran away once before, the police did not begin investigating Your disappearance until the next day. Far too long, and far too late

So many men say they do not know What happened to the now missing women who were once under their care.

Go away, but he did not go away, he pointed, and Said “Down the bridge” and down the bridge we sure Did go, and into a sick place we were taken, down Past our route, and down past our lives, and awful Things happened there, wrists wrapped, and only Each other’s eyes to look into before we knew we Were never going back

A man Years later met your family and told them of the men who took You, and your family feels guilt and is guilted, because you worked Because they could not give you money for college, and that is no Reason why your mother later had to scour where your body was Found to locate a hairpin that she keeps so close like a child,

you Are frozen in baby pictures,

Many questions, but if the questions Are all answered they cannot profit From your murder

Police have put out another call for help, Your help, and did she scream help, or Was she silenced,

if there’s anyone Who could know how to spin a lie How to weave a web, hide a body, It would be someone who dances With the law

We claim her, our Dorchester Jane Doe

Some friends open the doors to our exit

and your teddy bear can’t be Found

Your parents are now deceased, but you are still cold

You had ice cream just moments before At a park, at the playground with your Brother, found crying on the ground That someone had taken you while Your mother was seated in a car just A few yards away

Instead walk, maybe hitchhiked into a Constellation

We can hear their mourning songs erupt from The rainforest at night, pleading, come find Me

what is The punishment for a life stolen From time?

You cannot rehabilitate a man Who cannot keep count of how many women Were tricked, forced into his car, Volkswagen Strangled, headless, limp bodies to violate

What about her, Ted?

Could screams be heard? Could tears be felt?