The Missing

by Anthony Lawrence

Ten brass nails, a doll with grey eyes that fluttered then rolled

                   back into its head, the complete Western Angler

magazine series, a tiara set with plastic rubies and sapphires,

                   a Ouija board called Pathfinder, the usual assortment

of clothes. Lot 4, Auction of Unclaimed or Abandoned Luggage.

                   The suitcase was nondescript as a bag of rope,

the name tag missing, yet I made a successful bid and bought

                   a stranger’s things. Unlike my friend who finds it hard

to enter a hotel without feeding coins into a machine,

                   the gambling gene was not among the hand-me-down

items in my inheritance. The need for taking risks, however,

                   like holding the nervous animal of my breath

for too long under water or the covers while listening to you

                   breathe in your sleep, was alive and well.

After breaking the combination lock, a pair of magpies began

                   to sing, and I thought of their facial recognition skills,

remembering the features of at least two hundred people.

                   Then I returned my attention to the contents of the bag

and picked up a nail. Nine inches long, and heavy, the same

                   style a garrison of tunics had used to pin a supernatural

prisoner to the wood. Weighing them in one hand, I reached

                   past the doll with Linda Blair's expression during

the crucifix scene in The Exorcist, and opened a magazine

                   to an article on how to catch cobia by casting

red and white feather jigs to lure them out from under

                   the wings of manta rays. When I slipped the tiara

into my hair, I half expected a shower of lavender sparks.

                   I stared at the Ouija board until my eyes went out

of focus yet left it undisturbed. Apart from my late father,

                   there was no one I felt compelled to summon from

the other side of what being here and now means. I replaced

                   everything in the order they’d been found

and closed the bag. No bird sang. The words blood and line

                   arrived and shimmered, just out of reach,

all those names and ages locked into place, shining in the far

                   regions of the missing.