We Haunt Walls in the Homes of our Murderers

for the missing 43

Another glass of wine won’t wash us out.
A media can’t see us because
we blend in, a wall of brown in black, but
our disappearance made us monstrous.

Count us by our legs, we are
endless. You cut us apart,
we grow new heads. Our names
are written deep in words unsaid, but
they sit on tips of teeth,
build a taste, sour like bad candy. We lift out
of mudslides, and official nothing can’t hold
us. We steal the breath

of our murderers in wind whispers and hold
court on bus routes. Corruption
touches all that we see, so we soak
uniforms in our blood. Crowned
in cactus spikes, we indict them all.
They look in the bottom of their glasses,
we settle as dust that chokes, that grits
in their mouths.