Reservoir

They found the body of Michelle Farr

washed up on the shore of the reservoir.

We had jumped rope at recess together

in the schoolyard the day before.

She’d been heading for the corner store,

where my brother and I were sent for supplies for supper
or the newspaper. We also ran there for
our Star Wars collector cards.

She took a shortcut after dark
through the alleyway that bordered our back yard 
when she was approached by a strange car
and disappeared.

The neighborhood was up in arms.

Was she molested? I don’t recall. It seems they always are.

An adorable girl, her hair was long 

and dark, though my memory is marred

by time. Blurred by thirty years or more.

There was another girl on the four-square courts 

who could have been her sister, but prettier.

I wonder if I've mixed them up.

We are such nostalgic hoarders; 
we store up mystery and memories

until our attics swell with all the corpses.

I don't know if they ever caught the murderer.

He could still be alive, we may have met somewhere,

though more likely he fled directly afterward.

If it had never happened, maybe she and I 

would have become close, then drifted apart, 

then run into one another some years later

at a local bar. For hours we'd reminisce over beers,
dredging up memories we thought were gone.
I'd walk her to her car, I'd lead her by the arm 
up the stairs to my apartment..

Maybe I would ravage her 

warm flesh beneath the covers.

I can see her gazing up into my face as I hover over her
as if I were the specter,
her eyes glazed with tears in the early morning,

like endless reservoirs of love 

and terror.