Katherine Davis

Runaway

Every girl leaves her
dolls behind when she slides
the lock on the window, pries
at the casing to open. Fingertips
were made for hanging, not painting--
moons reflecting the earth's white satellite.

Let the nightgown too be white, ballooning
like a flower in a forest where pine needles
dust its eyes. And the girl--where does she fly?

Rather, someone has led her by and by,
so she is always flowing, stream water,
glimmering near a sob here, there,
a shriek of laughter.

Someday she will find the person she is
seeking, anger man in a basket, giddy
woman in a tree, some indiscrete emotion
dressed as a beast. What is love but
the unfurling of the cape? The kiss of saying
"You are found again," the wretched gasping
to go back?

"Home is my body," you say.

And the girl replies, "Sir,
my body has been misplaced."

Previously, Katherine Davis' poetry has appeared in CutBank and Weber Studies: Voices and Viewpoints of the Contemporary West. A former English teacher in Pocatello, Idaho, she is currently employed as a writer and editor for the Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C.