for Sherri Jarvis and all the other girls who don’t have their names back yet.

Somewhere out there, a young woman with brown curls is lying in a ditch. It has been three days since anyone has noticed this body. She was wearing a ponytail when she was taken. A smile before she turned around. A forest coat and brown boots, she might’ve had a similar sounding name. Something about the vowels.

On a Tuesday she is discovered and she is taped and pardoned from the freeway. She no longer lingers in limbo, she may just gawk at her own decay. Watches a man with hands very similar to the last turn her over and move her. She does not look at him, she did not look at the last one. She didn’t want to know.

When they put her in a bag face up, more courtesy than he had, she is grateful to feel like her eyes are closed. She is grateful to have been found.

When they cannot contact her family because he pulled out all of her teeth, stole away her fingerprints, devoided her of identity she learns the word lost. When she is sitting in a metal box for six weeks with no reprieve, they bury her in the local cemetery and they bury her “Unnamed White Female, November 1980” 

This is how they make us forgotten, they are thorough in their work and they are faithful to their cause. This is how they take our names. This is how they take our lives. This is how they take us out       it’s a group effort.