Kelley White Without a Trace My mother said, we lost him, as if he were the car keys, as if he were a lucky penny fallen between the cushions of the couch, as if he’d wandered off at dawn in his night shirt with frazzled hair looking for a place to hide and sneak a cigarette and even now men were beating the bushes from Hatch Drive to Wilson’s field calling; as if he’d left us for some mistress, some other family he’d kept secret ‘til this morning when they needed him more than we did, his body gone already to the morgue—vanished, not a finger print left on the door knob, not a single white hair, lost,  like a losing hand at poker, like a button popped from a vest, like a missing pair of cuff-links,   like one mitten in a pair and I’d have to keep the other hand in my pocket all winter, lost, like his eagle scout badge I dropped somewhere on the mountain, lost, as if he were the dog coaxed away with a marrow bone, as if you were a bad bet, she says you’re lost, lost, as if she’d stapled fliers to telephone poles, left them at the supermarket, where even now people are tearing off the little slips with our phone number and any day now will be calling with good news.

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