The heroine sprints past the girl
whose neck snapped in the garage door
cat flap, the boy pinned to the wall
with a kitchen knife. The heroine
slept in that girl’s room every weekend.
The heroine would’ve married that boy.
No time to cry; the killer approaches.
Using the moon as her flashlight, she cuts
a sharp right. She thinks of nothing
but escape. When she does, credits roll.
No funeral scene. Her friends existed
to die. No one remembers the dead
girl trimmed her brother’s hair
over the bathroom sink, the dead boy
held his grandmother’s hand at church.
Their classmates don’t release balloons
in their honor, write tributes in chalk.
No one speaks their names in sequels.
Melissa Fite Johnson’s poems have been published by Broadsided Press, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. Her first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), and her second, Ghost Sign (Spartan Press, 2016), which she co-authored, were both named Kansas Notable Books. She is also the author of A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Melissa and her husband live with their dog and chickens in Kansas, where she teaches English at her old high school.