Disappearance Riddle

By Lauren Swift

across the park and over the bridge and through
the carnival and past the dog run and a quick stop
by the pretzel vendor and under the lover
and into a tempest
to whose house do we go

—to knock
an entire day at a door, harm if there is an answer
or none

is it grandmother’s, where she would hide
candy for us in little baskets and boxes
the kind our father would take from us
were it not for her hawkish stare, which he feared

—and after we are done and beyond the portals and
between body and becoming, toward being, closer
to knowing and still as far as at birth—

perhaps, to an extraterrestrial’s home
wriggly lifeforms serving, from titanium teasets,
viscous liquids that taste like nothing and everything,
all at once,
where we must learn new languages together,
their mouth-holes forming around our human ohs
and our gangly limbs trying to articulate
the syntax of their bodywords

into the dwelling we go and from where, we ask—

maybe it is the house of the one who has died
their sweater still hanging off the edge
of the kitchen stool, and stagnating water
in the dog bowl, growing gunk, and small mail piles
that no one has thought to try to stop yet

—

About Author

Lauren is a writer and editor in Sacramento, CA. Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, North American Review, Atlanta Review, The 2River View, The Rumpus, Birdcoat Quarterly, No Contact, and Poets.org. She was a finalist for the 2022 Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize. You can find her online at her website, Instagram, and X.