I’m fated not to save a one of them,
not with their patched jeans,
and faded t-shirt, and worn out
lumpy back-pack slumped to the side
like a still-born child.

Even in the bus station,
a cold busy interstate of hell,
with the p.a. voice rattling off
names of towns where nobody lives
and not a soul goes home to.

Their trail from screwed-up home
to anonymous big city
doesn’t intersect but shadows mine.
But we’re more than scratched pen-marks
on a personal map.
We may dress like a common ordinary
“I don’t give a shit.”
But we’re these humans, inside where
you can’t get at us.

And I have no remedy, no rescue plan.
Not for the one with ratty blonde hair
floating all over the pages
of a Carlos Castaneda paperback.
And nor is there a guidebook in my pocket
for the child-woman dressed black as her own death
and penetrated at the nose
by a desultory silver ring.

I just go on with who I am,
running away in small doses,
a drift in a conversation here,
another moment lingered in my own room there.
Sometimes, I come and get me
and stick me where I belong.
But it’s not always me.
And it’s seldom where I fit in.

Meanwhile, an ashen-faced young girl, maybe sixteen,
is taking a bus to another bus station.
Have a good trip. I’ll see me when you get there.