Sometimes when a kid runs away from the residential home for children I work at, I can’t help but be a little worried. Most of them are not capable of making healthy choices out there on their own, or of protecting themselves from the most dangerous of predators—the mammals that walk on two legs.

missing

what will become of you?

your meal-back waits silent
  cold as the grave

three slices of turkey
industrial green beans
  exhausted in a pile and
mashed potatoes
  tipping from the edge
  of the topmost slice
all soaked in brown gravy
  glistening in a dull dim pool
  from the styrofoam

at regular intervals
  AWOL marks your absence
even your ghosts have gone
  slithering off to whisper
  doubt and foreboding
behind your mud brown eyes

the roads are long
  the streets dusty with soot
  tapped from the heals of fear
and predation

you never took that one slow breath
  hands trembling eyes twitching
you never breathed down
  into the heart of your anguish
  giving it room to rise
into understanding

down the hall your room
  gapes in the stillness
bed neatly made
writing desk arranged
  the dorm radio outlined
  in hushed gray hues

the city’s cracked walls
  harbor a quiet will to
  cull out the weakened
passing cars carry menace
  sharp white smiles cheerful
  with an unsettling calm
anticipating indulgence

your meal-back waits silent
  at the edge of the office desk
  on plastic wood veneer
across the narrow room
  plastic fluffs the hollow
  gray of a tin garbage can
and it too waits
  for the nearly plastic cold
  of your neglected dinner

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