The Searching

Fighting; I am lost and I lose.

I try to start over but it won’t let me.

Instead I am moved to where you are.

You are a man and I meet you

Standing by your pick-up and you say to me

“I’ve lost my boy and I can’t find my boy”.

So I say we go. We go to find him.

We get in and you drive. We drive off screen

Into the distance and back around again

Like a game and we’re on the street we started on

And you park on the street corner where I found you.

“Now we search,” you tell me. So we get out.

You search outside. I move to search inside

The red building by our street corner.

You stare—searching—at the woods next to the building.

You stare and you pace around the lot.

I go inside the red building. It’s a mechanic shop

And there are two men in white jump suits.

I try and I ask them if they’ve seen a boy.

They try to tell me something. One’s mouth opens

And a syllable begins to form but it stops.

He begins to form a word, but he can’t finish it.

He can’t even begin the sentence he can’t even finish.

I think he was here though. The boy. I wonder

If those two took him. I leave to look for you

To see if you found him.

I think it may be they tried to tell me

“We tried to fix him but we couldn’t”.

I look for you and you’re outside staring at the woods.

You have your finger pointed out and your arm raised up.

You are pointing to the trees.

You tell me “I found him. I found my boy”.

I look up and I see him there.

I see his lower half dangling from the branches

And I tell you: “We found him.