i hope you know we looked for you

i hope you know we looked for you.
we pulled up the floorboards, dug up the garden.
we ran through the woods that bordered the house, hoping against hope to find a single sign of you.
we knew you weren’t dead of course.
that would’ve been silly, but what we knew was that you’d disappeared, without a trace.

i hope you know we looked for you.
we spent days, nights, and everything in between searching.
we went out at sunrise and at sunset, because somebody told us that those were the times when the doors opened.
the doors to the spaces between the worlds, the times when things that were lost could more easily be found again.
we knew you weren’t dead of course.
that would’ve been silly, but we searched and searched and there wasn’t a single piece of you left to find.

i hope you know we looked for you.
even though everyone else told us it was madness, we refused to stop.
we packed our bags and headed out as far as we could, hoping against hope that a miracle would occur.
and that you would be found.
we carried our lives with us, wandering like nomads, wondering at every corner if you would be on the other side.
we knew you weren’t dead of course.
that would’ve been silly, but we had scoured the world and yet you were still gone.

i hope you know we looked for you.
on that final day, we sent up a million prayers, a thousand paper cranes, a wish on every dandelion we could find.
a wish that you would finally be found.
when we found your body in the river, we couldn’t even cry.
our prayers had been answered. but in all the wrong ways.

By Jack Verhagen

Biography:

Jack Verhagen is a 17-year-old poet from the sunny state of California. She enjoys writing and skateboarding, as well as frequenting any coffee shop that can be found in the area. She hopes to be able to compile a chapbook of her poetry in the near future, and looks forward to her future growth as a writer.