We Mean All of Them
A poem for the ones who didn't make it home.
Get over it, the deputy says, chewing gum
like it’s sin to remember. Funny he’s made of badge
and barbed wire, and we’re made of prayer and pink
flyers stapled to telephone poles without a job.
What I want to say is, Sir, we did get over it,
we got over fences and guardrails and state lines
looking for her. We got over you and your clipboard,
your eye-roll, your we-already-checked-the-creek.
She was sixteen and late to everything
except that last breath. She had a laugh
that didn’t need papers. She wore
Nikes and a beaded keychain with her name—
the name no one spells right in reports.
Instead, they call her Jane. As in, Doe.
As in, we misfiled that, as in, no one’s daughter.
And you want us to light a candle and let it go,
like she’s a balloon, like she floated off,
like her body wasn’t made of warmth and rib
and favorite songs. Like she wasn’t last seen
outside a Sinclair in Billings, wearing her cousin’s
denim jacket and asking for a ride.
Instead, we bring casseroles and placards.
We cross off days, our debts unpaid.
We hold vigils by highways and still
someone asks why we make it political.
Guess what, there are more missing girls
than cities willing to put up signs.
More cold cases than cold beers
at the American Legion Post 16.
Well, this is your Lynchburg too,
your Montana and Oklahoma and New Mexico
everywhere names slip through cracks in the map
like nickels down a drain.
And when we say her name,
we mean all of them.
We mean no not a myth.
We mean no not forgotten.
We mean no not yours to erase.
So don’t tell us to get over it.
Get jurisdiction. Get funded.
Get cameras on the roads going nowhere.
Get off their lands if all you’ll bring is judgement.
Get names right, stories right,
justice right.
Because we’re not looking for smoke.
We’re looking for fire.
We’re looking for the girl who loved basketball,
the one who danced to Chance the Rapper,
the one who was last seen
and then never seen again.
Get a name.
Get all their names.
We mean all of them.
And never put them down.
Author’s Notes:
This poem was written for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) Awareness Month. It responds to the staggering crisis of Indigenous girls and women who go missing or are murdered with little media coverage or justice.
The point is to honor stories that are often silenced. Especially in places like “Lynchburg,” a stand-in for any American town where names are lost and systems fail.
We’re not looking for smoke. We’re demanding fire in the form of truth, accountability, and the naming of injustice.