Unfinished Exit

I keep thinking

about the time in high school

when you drew

me

a map of the city,

I still have it somewhere.

It was so easy

to get lost

in a place where all the trees

look the same.

And now

every time I see

a missing person's poster

stapled to a pole,

all I can think is

that could have been me.

Missing,

disappeared.

But there are no

posters for people

who just never came back

from vacation, from college,

from life.

You haven't killed yourself

because you'd have to commit to a

single exit.

What you wouldn't give to be your cousin Catherine, who you watched

twice in one weekend get strangled nude in a bathtub onstage

by the actor who once

filled your mouth with quarters at

your mother's funeral.

The curtains closed and opened again.

We applauded until

our hands were sore.

But you couldn't shake the image of

her lifeless body,

the way she hung there like a

marionette with cut strings.

And now every time you try to write a poem, it feels like a

eulogy.

A desperate attempt to

capture something that's already

gone.

But maybe that's why we keep writing, keep searching for

the right words,

because in this world where everything is temporary,

poetry is our only chance at

immortality.

So even though you haven't

found the perfect ending yet,

you keep writing.

For Catherine, for yourself, for all the lost souls

who never got their own

missing person's poster.

Because as long as there are words on a page, there is still hope for an unfinished exit to find its proper

ending.