The inspiration for this poem is Lorraine "Rainie" Conner, a character in Lisa Gardner's The Third Victim.

Rainie

She lives

In a house in the woods,

In denial of fear and hatred of love

And the gun in a shoebox in the back of the closet;

In a bloodied past amid the soaring pines

The beads that fell from the ceiling

Red pinpricks and drowning

And the man that laughed at misery

While beer and memories stained the ground.

She never liked being watched

She can’t tell if the laughter is still in her mind

Along with the yellow-flowered fields and smooth-flowing streams

And the shadow that melts through the sliding glass door

While her mother’s last redeeming thought

Reverberates too late for salvation

And only now does she understand the significance.

What is past is not over

What is buried can live

And she doesn’t know how to save the little boy on the back deck

Or what to do with real love

Or why all the children are dying.

She can’t get the image out of her mind

Of the two girls holding hands in heaven

Their twin coffins

And the chalk-white outlines on the floor of the school hallway.

And so she spends her nights cradling an empty bottle

Thinking of speeding cars and dead passions and lost control

Too tough to feel a thing anymore

Staring up at the scattered sky

And whispering that once,

she had

a

s o u l .