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 Leaves tangled within her eye sockets, stretched down to her finger bone

Gas stations during road trips Are in between places, they are The Bermuda Triangles of our Roads,

for A man who recorded your every blink And turn, your every utterance within Your household, and on the day for you To disappear, for the devices to die Would seem coincidental? Suspicious?

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

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

After twenty-two years of waiting. 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.

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

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

at the intersection of deception.

no one Hearing the wickedness that prowled your perimeter That night

he is not caged,

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

Some friends open the doors to our exit

How far can bones travel down river until they turn Around?

dreams dotted by Lightening bugs,

Blessed by the sun and damned By everything in between.