Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Have You Seen Me?, 2020 (Artist Website)
Photograph
She says she wants to get right up
to the edge.
I mean to ask her of what,
but it slips my mind.
Instead we watch
the silver moon dissolve
over the cedars,
a hundred marzipan birds
twisting in warped delight.
We watch from the windowsill,
which is a sort-of edge,
an easy one granted.
Although there are always
characters in books who never
even make it that far.
The living room TV is alight
with the name
of another missing woman.
Last seen in Beaumont buying a box
of tampons and some spearmint.
The awful thoughts sit like marbles
in their silken pouch,
waiting for me to palm one
into the room, out of
its colossal darkness.
The evening gnats
circling the head like
a halo on a garbage angel.
The wind looked so clean
pushing its way past the ferns.
And the vanilla blooms were bulbing
in the swamps, sending
their scent to us in the night,
pressing against
the smell of warm garbage
and sweaty kelp, so that in that moment
despite it all,
we felt clean too.