It's not as easy to disappear as it once was,
back in those long ago days before endless threads
of information and the 24-hour news cycle,
and anyone, past or present, could be found
with a few clicks on a phone or laptop.
People went missing, and very often stayed that way,
sometimes by choice and elaborate plans,
sometimes turning up with amnesia
in a city on the other side of the world.
Those stories became books and movies, discussed
with amazement at work and the dinner table.
Deaths were staged, and former lives disowned;
a father went out for a pack of cigarettes
and was never heard from by his family again.
My own father ran a successful business
mere blocks from our home, though I never once
saw his face or heard his voice until years later.
You, too, old friend, somehow disappeared
in plain sight, your retreat at first subtle,
then complete, as if planned years in advance.
There was nothing anyone could do.
You became a story with neither an ending
nor linear narrative; though I am speaking of you
now -- that's nothing new -- speaking of you
in the only way I know, reminding myself
that once you were here, right where I am now,
and that once, not so long ago, you could
have said all of this better yourself, could have come
back, if only to tell us what really happened.
