Dominique Hughes was picked up for
shoplifting
by the Bon Marché security guards.
This yellowed index card says he
was nine years old.
Another card— age twelve,
weighing in at a slight 95 pounds
he was caught peeking
into a women’s dressing room.
All of us articulate want as legibly as we can.
I find another card—mine.
It shows I’m fourteen.
Accomplice.
That is a lie.
I am tempted to rip it—
to replace accomplice with observer.
After all,
when Shelbie snapped the rose-etched,
leather bracelet
around her wrist I hissed—put it back.
Only a month earlier
Glenda and I stopped and searched at
J.C. Penny’s
for palmed lip gloss and dangly
earrings.
I didn’t even have pierced ears.
Those blue beads looked cold as ice
cream,
like polished milk. I was hungry with want,
but a want that yearned to receive more
than this take.
Shelbie didn’t put it back.
Between tears, her mouth contorting
like a hooked trout,
security guards bruised her upper
arm.
On command, I lifted my shirt—
drafts in that gray concrete cellar
hardened my nipples into worthless
currency.
I am momentarily surprised,
whether by oversight, or charity,
the Bon Marche hired me to add
to that collection.
Thousands of cards—
each a record of want:
a watch, a pair of shorts slipped
under a skirt.
Dominique, again.
At 15—a concealed gun.
The card is sparse,
handwritten scrawls fading.
His history—
a series of bad choices
kick-started by f desire.
Now,
twenty years later
the
newspaper informs me
Dominique
Hughes—
sentenced for murder.
Before
I can file an imaginary card
in my mind into something manageable,
my new manager waves me over.
He
shows footage—
American Air-fighters
zeroing
in on insurgents.
I walk away.
They deserve it, he says, punching his
desk.
Yesterday he was telling me
about his annual hunting trip with
his nephew.
He can no longer bring himself to
shoot elk,
he can only catch and release fish;
that’s how soft he’s become.
He said he hopes I won’t think less
of him,
Some days the want and shame,
are too much for me to take in.
We are all connected—
and I can no longer tell
where one desire ends
and another begins.
