Looking for Maria
Condemned and boarded up, these rows
of four-plex former public housing.
If she’s here, she’s deader than
the deadbolt locks. Twelve years old, a face
that sunnies out of photocopy posters
looking for luck in the 7-Eleven’s
all over town.
Rows of houses, every floor-plan’s
the same: flashlight entry to a kitchen,
living-room linoleum,
up the stairs to banged-out windows
(a starling beat itself to death
against the light). Then on to bathroom,
bedroom, closet, cleaned-out shelves.
She isn't here.
Thirty units to the street
where tenants left or were evicted
in a hurry. And every floor-
plan’s the same. A smoke detector
blips along the hall. Kitchen
living-room up the stairs to
bedroom bathroom toilet drains
to closet left and down and out.
I'm dizzy with doors where
people lived and packed things up and
only left a pull-top tab a button
a dead starling. She isn’t here.
~ Taylor Graham
first appeared in Free Lunch