Lost Girl Poem by David Lewis Paget

My girl went out on a Saturday night
They said that she was alone,
I'd said, ‘We'll meet at the Cineplex, '
But the movie was postponed,
I waited there in the vestibule
For an hour, or maybe more,
But she made me feel a total fool
And I left by the same front door.

Where are you Ruth, now tell me the truth
Did you go to meet some guy,
Did you think the movie a total bore,
Did you plan to go and get high?
Your friends all said you're a scatterbrain
And I think they might be right,
But you've been gone for a couple of days
And your mother's taken fright.

She called the cops when I went around
To see what happened to you,
Your mother thought we had spent the night
So she had a piece of me too,
I told her I hadn't seen you, girl
Since the Friday afternoon,
Her face went white, and her eyes were bright
With the tears that she cried for you.

So where have you gone, my Ruth, my girl
Since you wandered into the town,
Did you walk right past the Cineplex
And carry on further down,
Where the lights are bright in the dead of night
And the clubs begin to rage,
With the music's beat in the summer heat,
Did you walk right off my page?

They called me in and they grilled me there
At Precinct Forty Six,
A squad of detectives yelled at me
‘Til I thought they were having fits.
I told them you hadn't met me there
But they said that it was a lie,
I couldn't answer their questions
Cross my fingers, and hope to die!

A lawyer came in to see me
So they had to let me go,
And now I wander about the streets
Just looking for you, you know.
I tried to phone but they found your cell
In some old back alley bin,
Behind the Hospital Organ Store
But they wouldn't let me in.

I passed a nurse on the street today
And she carried a bag like yours,
And on her wrist was a trinket chain
With an elephant and a horse,
I ran beside her and asked her where
She'd bought those silver charms,
But then she threatened to call the cops
And scream! - raise the alarm.

I have a terrible feeling, Ruth
But don't know who to tell,
And visions rise in my fevered brain
Of you in a makeshift hell,
Your kidneys sat in a freezer pack
Your liver and both of your eyes,
I asked for you at the hospital desk
But the nurse there told me lies.

I asked if you'd had an accident
Were lying in one of the wards,
She said, ‘We never do accidents,
We'd just be swamped by the hordes.'
The place was run by a specialist
In transplants, great and small,
He had a long, continuous list
At a hundred grand a call.

The weeks have flown and you're still not home
So I watch, and stand outside,
And every patient that leaves the place
I look for your purple eyes,
They've got you listed as missing, girl
A poster on every pole,
But I know, whatever they find of you,
They're not going to get you whole!

18 December 2012