Lost and Not Found

We search out the lost and found when we lose our favorite sweater, or our glasses, but what happens when a person finds themselves in the lost and found, but no one bothers to find them? The longer the person sits there, the more they believe “I can find myself, I don’t need anyone else.” But the problem is we need someone else, and that someone else is standing right in front of us, staring through us like they are a figment of our imagination. Pale skin that moves only in the direction of away, we grasp at thin air hoping to survive, to find a raft in the stormy seas of our lives, but instead succumbing to the waves, we swallow water hoping that it’ll make us drown faster, so that we won’t have to be stared through any longer, because being stared past, shrugged off, and pushed away is not what we wanted, we only wanted to be saved from this ugly beaten brown box of lost and found. We are lost and not found, because we are not worth your time. We band together, hoping that we can survive together. When we have stayed past our time, we are donated, left to sit on dusty racks, pressed between the others of the lost and not found, never sleeping because we can’t stop our minds from asking “Why am I lost and not found?” We never find our answer, filling the void with drugs that won’t quite kill us, but will mute the pain, if only for a moment, because we are lost and not found, not even searched out. We are lost and not found, but in this lost we found each other, beaten and broken hoping that we can mend each other without breaking ourselves. We are lost and not found, and I might just be okay with that, because I realize now I don’t want to be found, I don’t want to choke back my tears in front of you, I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to laugh, I want to be happy, and I don’t want you to find me, but for some reason I still need you to find me.