Into the Forest and all the Way Through

by Cynthia Pelayo

An adult, they said, who had every Right to vanish, eaten up into a pit

Can ghosts haunt structures That live only in our memory?

Some friends open the doors to our exit

We want answers Your Cherokee Nation, one of Thousands of activists have stormed State capitols, flooded social media Asking what is happening with our Missing and murdered Indigenous Women, from the lakes and rivers Of Alaska to the plains of Oklahoma A crisis for our women, 145 in OK Alone, when this many women go Missing in such a place, someone Knows something,

pastor once told Her to throw her ballerina flats into the Fire, told her to not dress like a woman But she is a woman, she is our woman

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

High-risk, that’s what police call it when they insinuate Your murder was meant to be, justified, yet what they Do not call high-risk, whose life styles they do not question Are those skilled with the ways of bloodstained bath tubs Who stab, cut, slice, dislodge. Who trace steps. Track humans And carry dismembered parts of a body, wrapped in Plastic, a present, an offering for dumpsters and landfills

The words “high-risk lifestyle” and instead replace them with The man who murdered you, a man, who is not just a man, a Serial killer

and in the trees we can still hear the Swaying of the ghosts of your clothes that hung from branches

You were visiting family, and like many teenagers, maybe you found It boring to sit among relatives, as they gossiped and laughed, you Wanted to see a movie, so you took a walk to the local movie theater Never heard from again, like the three other young girls who left Around the time you did, sisters in disappearance, of a crime that rings True.

it’s Time to scream her name Into the universe so that Her blood may vibrate With the knowing of Your longing for her to Just walk in through that Front door,

She is not a runaway or any Of those other names that Are said to discredit the value Of their lives, of her life,