Nowhere

A container, rust-bitten,

half-eaten by the sun, sitting alone

like it’s always been here.

Like it belongs.

-

People come here to disappear.

People bring people here,

and only one goes back.

Sometimes none.

-

It’s been this way so long

the marshal stopped caring.

Said something once, years ago,

when he still had fire in his belly.

Then his niece met a man at the diner,

one of those stray-eyed travelers,

all easy smiles and no past.

-

They went to the desert.

Never came back.

-

Next morning the marshal raged,

went off about vanishings,

the hush, the silence.

By sundown, someone took him too.

To the desert.

To a container like this one.

And when he returned,

he never spoke again.

-

Quiet now.

This stretch of land is so peaceful.

-

Strangers come in twos, sometimes ones,

sometimes in buses,

mostly old folk,

smiling too wide.

Like their faces don’t know how to do anything else.

Not drugged, no - it can’t be that.

-

They go elsewhere.

And the land stays quiet.

And the sky stays big.

And the rusted container sits,

biding.

-

Because things like that happen,

out here

in the middle

of nowhere.

.