Where is she?

going on about maybe her gonads and his pets and
her dad's panic attacks over speaker phone is all right,
but with every open container in the back of her brother's
beamer covered with broken pistachio nuts scarred Carmen, i bet.

I am sure she took an advanced placement government class
as a senior in her rural high school where tony merriman winked
at her in the hall after fourth period for at least a week or two.
She learned how to wax her eyebrows with Lacey from across the
street one weekend and in another she shared a bottle of bottom
shelf gin with tony's older brother who just got his last paycheck
from nolan's grocery store.

and she would go on to root for a team at the university she chose
over the next state's, maybe michigan's, best private college.
face painted red and walked dogs to pay for spring break with
a couple of socialists and a few poets but no nobody really stopped
her at any where but right after class to ask her a question, really,
about how she was doing. so maybe she got up and did things like
run the streets and possibly choose alleyways over well-lit boulevards
because the danger tickled something more hidden than her g-spot.

but she could never marry for money so she worked her ass off and
took those business trips nobody else took because they had kids and
great pyrenees to think about. she saw algiers and met quiet men from
bali and she sat

at this pier, alone, in Seattle.

She realized she really had nothing to give or to take--not one breath has
she stolen from another human being except for once. Once she took
Jay Hesse's robin's egg blue crayon and he did not know what to do with himself.
It took him at least five seconds to decide between screaming for Ms. Little's
help or to negotiate calmly for his ocean back. He was drawing the back of
his Antarctic habitat and needed desperately for the soft, subtle blue's support.

And he screamed. Carmen sat back in her plastic, kindergarten classroom chair
and held darkly onto that crayon like she had the power to evaporate an entire
sea. Jay roared and the whole classroom paused. Suspended. Caused to simply
witness because of one simple grab and hold by one simple, taciturn girl.

And nobody asked, "how in the world was Carmen San Diego?" So she will settle
for at least a while, in the girl's bathroom, for "where in the world is that girl
who made Little Hesse's crayon box one less?"