after 2 long hours of t-ball practice, she exits the earth
leaving behind a ditched bicycle on bulldog road
and several blocks away, a soiled trapper keeper
spilling out spelling homework that will remain undone
for as long as any of us might live to know about it

her disappearance walked the streets at night, visiting
us in our beds for the rest of that summer and forever, an idea
creeping into our lives as unfathomably as she had left it

someone finds her soon enough, sleeping beneath
a pile of softly patted earth, all but two thin sprouts,
the white stalks of her forearms, bloomed with open hands
waiting to be held, grasped
pulled from the dirt

but how she got there, half-planted and reaching, is never known
and this bit of it can never be misplaced, explanationless
it extends itself, an arc of unknowing, reaching across years
to those who might have missed her, looked for her along ditches
and roadways, kept her class notes and school photos
as evidence, until even those things were sifted out
by the slow, absent-minded mechanics of living

forgotten, they move to that place where all lost things go
and wait to be remembered, eager to find us
these things reach up from the ground, reassuring us
that we too are missed
that it's been so dark there without us