2019 - Lost

There's a shop downtown where the sign on the front door has been turned to 'CLOSED' for some time now. Weeks worth of dust line the antiques within, and the bulb of the Tiffany lamp on the too tall counter's burned out. There's no answer when the delivery man knocks on the back door, no answer on the phone when he calls.

There's a half-finished love letter painstakingly written in too-formal Spanish sitting on a desk in a house on Bayside Road, a stack of Spanish poetry books and Spanish-to-English translation guides close by. There's a maid that keeps coming in and leaving happily because there's nothing to clean, just a bit of dust to wipe away. There's an empty cat dish and a litter box that hasn't been used. There’s weeds that are growing in the flowers by the pergola.

There's a janitor at the hospital scraping the name off an office door. There's an administrator who makes another hire and promptly forgets about the no call no show. There’s a receptionist who answers a call and files her nails, telling the person on the other end that she always knew crazy would win in the end.

There's a daughter in Seattle who's left fifteen voicemails and countless more texts. There's an ex-wife across the country who can't believe he would do this.

There's a father at the Pourhouse who couldn't care less, because she was nothing to him anyway.

There's two less people in Gray Harbor. Theirs is a story that just comes to an end.