Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales were friends out for an evening together in Los Angeles in November 2021 when they were held against their will, drugged, and then “dumped like garbage” outside of two hospitals by three masked men.
When I was in LA in June of 2024, I stopped by the hospital where Hilda was dumped and placed a card and sunflowers for the two young women, a simple sign of respect for the beautiful lives they lived in this world and a gesture of love for them now that their lives transcend the violence they endured.
Dust Devil, a Poem by Mary Sue Barnett
Hilda and Christy,
What does heaven
say about your pain, your cries, your violent end?
A maniacal energy
trapped you
sucked you
into a wild frenzy
of femicidal lust
They stole your consciousness
you could not see
nor walk
they stole
your joy
you could not dance
nor laugh
they stole
you from your
very breathing
so you could never
say tomorrow
Evil seized you
into its grip
the beasts clawing
at your existence
thrusting you into
a desert of
no chance
Love, altogether absent
The femicidal
dust devil
spit you out
onto the pavement
alone in the night
your light diminished
passing away
With the force
of ocean waves
pounding ancient
cliffs and boulders
heaven cries
tears for you
Hilda and Christy
you and your sisters stolen by violent men
open the windows
of paradise to
cry your holy tears
upon your earthen
bodies that once were and upon your soft skin as you remember it
and upon the dust
to calm its frenzy
and upon the desert of violence to love the evil out of existence
You and your sisters in your
bodies of light
sing in unison across the realms through your windows of
joy onto all pavements of terror
in a haunting,
sacred tone
Rise and Heal
Love is Near