The day I leave is two months before the day I’m found. 

It is summer, mosquito-thick Maryland weather and tears dropping on empty floors in the house I grew up in. And it is also autumn, where girls I once knew recognize my name as the golden haze of August ends and the rustle-crackle of the dead leaves begin. 

I spend weeks in my mother’s blue Subaru, speeding past the cornfields and skidding onto dirt roads. I spend days slipping away from people I used to talk to often, like sand through my fingers on a North Carolina beach I once used to visit. No one tells you that there’s a certain distance in miles that can’t be put into words. There is no more “see you tomorrow”. There are only time zones and online communication and voices I can still recognize but never hear. 

I lose the pieces of me I gave to other people. They’re not shattered, just missing. One I know is hidden in my old karate class, where I felt stronger than the weak fool I am. Another is tossed into my friend’s computer, where the videos I edited still remain unfinished. Another still is left on a middle school stage I’ll never return to, hiding in between props and too-full shelves. 

People tell me that they miss me and never pick up the phone. And that is when those pieces shatter, are swept under the bed by careless fingers and mindless actions.

My friend meets another. “You know Anna?” “Yeah, I know her.” They tell me that I would like this teacher or that, that they wish I were there, and that they are forming bonds thanks to me. If I am an artist, I left marks all over these people. If I was a good artist, I would have done a better job that guaranteed I was there.

But I am, but I’m not. And as autumn melts into winter, people find me in each other through a name or a shared memory. They are not missing anymore. I’ve left clues for them to find, maybe, to solve the mystery of themselves. I like to think that my brushstrokes, my artist’s pen, have created a path. A safe place. Maybe they’ll find me. 

I miss me.