Memories of a Murderess

At the school cafeteria tables,
she sat beside me, chattering away,
a slender hummingbird singing fables
of hope, obliquely hinting that life may
or may not contain beatings, older men
who found her twelve-year-old frame attractive,
an anguished anger overwhelming when
she would shift from hope to hyperactive.
We didn’t really talk about this much.
I’d listen, afraid she’d startle and fly.
She’d take the prettiest paper to touch
and fold — cranes, butterflies — her shining eyes,
for just a moment, those of the child
she could have been, before she was reviled.