At first I thought I’d killed her, this girl I never met,
her blood congealed beneath my feet. Peering
underneath the car, I found no body, nothing
but that beaded hair clip like salmon roe
abandoned in the gray morning mist,
a strand of bloodsoaked hair clinging to the lifeless beads.
No way back even had I been able to pick up all the
pieces. Too late to catch life that drained from her, life
I could almost hear wash away like water spilling over
rocks, like sighs.
I turned, called out but there was no answer.

This girl I never met stepped off the reservation, thumbed a ride
due west over the mountains, down River Road headed for the
biggest town she’d ever seen past a tangle of rusted
smokestacks, abandoned buildings, heaps of rubble piled along the
train tracks on the tideflats just off the old highway. Perhaps
instinct drew her toward
my side of town, her braided hair held back with an Indian
beaded clip, part of a Fancy Dancer’s regalia. Strong
currents swept this girl, who pinned her heart like a perfect
target on her pink fuzzy sweater, into the Loop and the Spot
for a beer on the day we never met.

Probably, she smelled of soap and wild mint, the rush of spring
melt heading for the open sea, of cottonwood and cedar bark, of
maidenhair fern

And maybe she was hungry to test the waters,
to float and flash in the amber glow of a Rainier
Beer sign blinking intermittently above the bar.
Shooting pool, her hard bones must have seemed to
soften as she leaned into the ball, suspended in grace,
like a salmon arcing as it rises silvery out of water,
a slow snapping curve silhouetted in smoky light.
She must have sensed eyes watching her, and maybe even
felt some small spark within.
At the very least she
must have smelled in his sweat the heat of that familiar
ache. Who knows? She may have smiled in his direction,
taken a drag off his cigarette, drank his beer and
shrugged her shoulders at closing time when he offered
a ride home. In the early hours when only those who close
the bars are up, she climbed into his pick-up truck.

It was early when I stepped out of my car and
spotted
lying in a pool of blood beneath my
tire, her beaded hair clip.

Crime scenes for those who stumble upon
them before the cops have cordoned off the
block are silent and still.

I called 911 to report something awful had happened,
to a girl I’d never met.
Afterwards, I stood vigil, her self-appointed pallbearer,
The sky hung heavy over me as I waited,
a few listless daffodils the only color
other than that slick red stain that spilled
into the street so deep it nearly drenched my
shoes in blood. I turned away and wiped
my soles over and over in the damp
moss along the parking strip, washed her blood spirit
away as best I could. I only managed to unearth her
lost memory lying shrouded in weeds-keys on a key
chain-gleaming like some guy’s pride.
And even though I never met her, I felt his
hard breath and hands press against her as she struggled, saw
how her neck recoiled when he grabbed her hair, the frantic
movement of her arm as she tore the keys from the ignition
and flung them out the window just before he put the
gun to her head when she screamed and scratched because
she wasn’t ready, not at nineteen, no time to leave
her blood clotting in cold lumps trickling down a gutter
a day’s journey away from the Reservation.

In salmon season, I am reminded of her, an apparition
who swims the currents, forever returning from the sea,
a paperwhite narcissus cold and pale as a distant face
floating just beneath the surface of the water.
This girl I never met
still heading home so many years past.

- Linda Willis Ford