Waiting

Title: Waiting

Author: Suzanne Kamata

Publisher: Kelsay Books, 2022

Waiting
 
My brother Benjamin waits
for Gent
our lost cocker spaniel
to come home.
 
Dad waits 
for his boss
to give him a promotion.
 
Mom waits
for portents
and signs.
 
My boyfriend waits
for me to say 
“yes.”
 
I wait 
for the future
far away from
here.
 
The town waits
for a missing girl
to turn up and tell us
it was all just a joke. 


Vigil
 
My little brother Benjamin 
fills the plastic dish
only to later dump

the untouched nuggets
and fill the dish
again, a ritual
a sacrificial offering
to our lost cocker spaniel.
 
He’s gone door to door
promising mown lawns
washed windows
shined cars
in exchange for information.
No one helps.
Everyone is more concerned about
the disappearance of a young woman.
 
Young women disappear
with alarming regularity.
Two dead, in the woods
naked.
A third 
still missing.
Shira Bates.


Shira
 
I was invited to her birthday party
in kindergarten.
I tried to wrap up
my mother’s engagement ring
after snatching it from a crystal saucer
while she washed dishes
a suitable gift for such a princess of a girl
I thought.
 
Mom caught me
spanked my behind
made me give Shira a Barbie
with silky blonde hair
smooth skin

wearing the latest fashions
like the birthday girl herself.
 
I was more Raggedy Ann.
 
Later, Shira and I drifted apart.
She fell in with the cheerleaders
became star of the chorus
girlfriend to Number One Hottie
Greg Shealy
found God.
 
While I faded into
gawkiness
good grades
and hid behind glasses 
and my long stringy hair.
 
Invisible me.


Her Voice
 
On the last day of school
a week before she went missing
Shira Bates sang with the chorus in
the school cafeteria
while I ate my blueberry yogurt.
 
Her voice blended then
soared above, the others went
silent, listening to her solo before
jumping back in again.
 
That girl could sing angels out of
the sky, could get larks to land on
her outstretched hands, I thought with
a kind of wonder instead of the usual
jealousy that I felt around Shira Bates.
  

ABOUT THE BOOK

American Suzanne Kamata attended Lexington High School in South Carolina with Sharon Faye “Shari” Smith, who was kidnapped and murdered by Larry Gene Bell in 1985. This crime compelled the writing of Waiting.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

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