The little boy about seven-years-old knocks on my door, in the trees all the birds are waking, chirping about cats and water

I need help, he says, so we walk hand-in-hand to an empty house a few streets over, I get the rusty latch open and he goes in with a smile

A few hours later, he returns and seems to be at least 10

He asks if I can let him use the phone, sure I say and then he calls his mother in a thin voice to come and get him…mommy, mommy please…and then he hangs up and stands on the street corner like a crushed sheet of paper

Sometime in the afternoon he returns and seems to be a girl maybe eighteen-years-old, but  somehow the same…hi, remember me, she asks…sure I do, come in and we talk for a while

Her voice is incomplete like light rain…