Roy Dorman: It Could Have Been Anybody

Eleanor liked to tell people
that she knew everybody in town.
She would tell anybody who would listen
that she could never live in a big city.
“You wouldn’t even know
all of the people on your block,”
she would exclaim with a theatrical shudder.

Not everybody liked it
that Eleanor shared information
she had about anybody with everybody.

“Well, if you don’t have anything to hide,
you don’t have anything to worry about,”
she would spout while looking you in the eye.

Tonight, while getting ready for bed,
she was stabbed in the heart
by one of the town’s anybodys
who had been hiding in her closet.

Even as she was dying,
a satisfied sigh escaped her;
she had known her assailant all of his life.
Why just this morning
she had been talking about him
to his pretty wife, Mary.

“I’m glad I had the chance to talk to her
about his foolin’ around
with that hussy, Melissa Baines.”

As to who killed Eleanor?
Everybody in town knew
that almost anybody could have done it.