Finders Losers

It’s nothing, nothing,
Nothing like the movies,
Not even like a comic book
Or one of the pulpy novels
Mom throws in the garbage
If she catches you reading them.
Instead, it’s like an intrusion
Into the routine that structures your summer.
You wake with the sun.
You listen to the radio while you eat cereal.
You pick up the messenger bag
That you already packed the night before,
Full of comics and your pocket knife,
Chocolate and a canteen and a watch that’s six minutes slow.
Scratch at your bug bites, admire your bruises,
Pull on your shoes and you’re out the door.
You charge into the woods behind your house,
Climbing over fallen logs
And leaping across mud patches.
You peer into the branches of the elm
To see if that bird’s nest is still there.
You accidentally soak your shoes in the creek
For the tenth day in a row.
You reach the clearing where
You climb into the big beech tree,
Settle back,
And survey your kingdom.
This time there is a rarer occurrence.
From your throne, you spot a treasure,
A red mystery hiding in the tall grass.
Excitedly, you climb down,
Rushing across the clearing,
Your curiosity making you impatient.
Here is where the routine stops.
There is a girl in your field.
Sometimes in the movies,
They say things like
“At first I thought she was sleeping.”
You do not think even for a second that she is sleeping.
She does not look peaceful,
She does not look natural.
She looks dead,
And even you in your youth
Know that is exactly what she is.
She is lying in the grass as though she was placed there,
Legs straight, arms by her side.
The front of her blue sundress is grass-stained and dirty,
Her white Mary Janes smeared with mud.
Her brown hair is jarringly neat,
Still with its red ribbon tied perfectly in place.
Her eyes are open.
You look into them.
They are shriveled, and have already begun to sink back into her head.
Her skin is pale,
Except for the marks on her neck,
Which are purple.
The forest is quiet in its noisy way –
Gnats buzz around your head,
Birds chatter and laugh from the big beech,
And the only thing that is loud
Is the dead girl,
Shattering the peace in the clearing
By the very fact of her grotesque presence.
The sticky heat of the morning is pressing down on you.
It does not bother the dead girl.
She is not part of your summer day,
She does not belong here in your kingdom.
You have been looking at her for about two minutes.
You begin to wish you had never seen her red ribbon.
This intruder in your forest kingdom
Has brought an end to the summertime.
You try to decide what to do next,
Knowing with the deathbed wisdom of your youth
That through your finding something
You have lost something,
And nothing, nothing
Nothing will bring it back.

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