There were stories before bed, my father with no book,

my sister’s black hair on the pillow.

And two little girls, just about your age, who unlocked

the back door and jumped right out of the kidnapper’s car.

And the story tells us that the girls ran—

past the lot behind the movie house, the drive-through

Alta Dena, the small vacant school with no tether balls.

It’s my turn to tell a story about two girls—

but not with this hard black bug, shiny as bolt cutters, hard

as a palm frond; just a fleck of blackness and then none.

This is just nostalgia. I know where the dishes go.

I know how the story turns out:

my sister doesn’t jump out at the red light.

How did father know? Besides, he was

a cop. We ran track. It doesn’t matter.

You go for a drink, or reach for the checkbook,

and it moves around in there. Once, I found a beetle

in a bite of whitefish. Once, a snake in the house that matched

the color of the couch.

I want you to imagine shiny black

hair, something stuck in a tooth—a buckle, a shoe, a closet, a room.

Imagine a close-up: underwater, shiny black hair—

weightless, slowed. I want to tell the story now:

And the girls ran into the water. Past the shape of buckets,

the undertow, the color, the sound, a plane pulling a long sign.

Kim Young (CA)  is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Bennington College. Her work has appeared in 5am, POOL, The Bedside Guide To No Tell Motel, and Solo.