You didn’t float.

You were stopped.

When the water receded,

you were exposed—not submerged.

Fishermen found you,

body snagged on rocks.

A blistering September day—

thunderstorms, then oppressive

ninety-degree heat,

normal in autumn along the banks of her mightiness.

They saw you in Hannibal,

childhood home of Samuel Clemens,

at the cave Tom Sawyer played in.

What carried you here?

Was it home?

Literary nostalgia?

The river?

Hunting ghosts?

In the 1800s, a local doctor

placed his dead teenage daughter

in an alcohol-filled copper cylinder—

preservation, he said.

Conversations with the dead.

They say a girl still roams the cave,

tourists capturing orbs on film.

Do you keep her company now?

If I visit, can we converse?

Would you spill about the sun-kissed giant

in cutoffs and work boots—

his younger blonder companion.

Was she his daughter? Lover?

Susceptible to moral seduction?

Afraid for her life?

Loyalty as twisted devotion?

Folie à deux?

A sterling silver ring with cubic zirconia—

or maybe glass.

The women at the gift shop said

you bought two rings.

Was this one?

The other for her?

Is she in the river too,

never making it to shore?

They dropped a dummy from the bridge

to see where it would land.

It offered no help.

JCPenney jeans, size 13/14.

XL striped T-shirt.

Were they borrowed?

Were you on the run?

A hitchhiker with horrible luck?

Already prey when they offered you

“sanctuary.”

Why does no one know you?

Know what caused the scar above your knee?

You were smothered—

a quiet, clean kill, they say.

Personal. Intimate.

It takes time.

Was it rage?

A vendetta?

deep desire for domination

Have they done this to someone else—

or maybe they were victims too?

What I ponder most

is who is missing you.

Silent water

But now that I see you.

I won't forget.