Girl Unforgotten

Who put Bella in the Wych elm?

-Graffiti repeated around Hagley Woods following the discovery of a local sex worker’s body inside a tree.

Bella, the question is not

who put you in the elm. The question is

who marred the town with looping

phrases of the first place of your rest,

love letters, in a sense, to your

wronged body, to your eyes

closed against the inner bark of the tree,

soft as antler velvet: the bark, your eyes.

One hand was flung above you

like a dancer and the other thrown

into the ground five violent feet away

from you. And boys woke up early to

help their mothers with breakfast,

run laps in fields, scrawl your name

on buildings, by train tracks, on

obelisks, in heady lines of black.

Agape at an old mystery,

they claimed it for themselves in

shivering night air with

can of paint in hand, felt pleasantly

an unexpected anger for you

that they reined in

before sadness. They prefer

to remember you

as a dancer; they prefer

to remember you

as a god. And when they

take their girls to

prom, they will watch the

translucent sheen rising off

dresses, the delicate meshes

across shoulders, and they

will smile to the girls, fix

corsages to their wrists, and think

only of the taffeta

at your throat.