Into the Forest and all the Way Through

by Cynthia Pelayo

Before you there, a girl who no longer is a girl, a girl who is bone and moss

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

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

You Skipped school that day for the beach, and no young Girl should be rewarded with terror in search of adventure

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.

If you did not fall, if You did not fly, then Where can you be?

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

Bookshelves now tell Of their suffering.

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

Timeline of a Disappearance 12:30 a.m.

when your mother begged for you not To go to work, for a mother’s intuition twists like bloody blades

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

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

told her to not dress like a woman But she is a woman, she is our woman She is a missing woman,

her memory now joined Forever with the missing and murdered, forgotten and ignored, women, Our women, our little girls