WHEN YOU CAN'T TUCK THEM INTO BED

How horrible it must be for parents whose children are lost, whose stories remain unfinished. Natalee Holloway lived just miles from my house, and in the following poem I imagine what it's like to be her mother.

Six Months Later
for Beth Holloway Twitty

I would have flown out, too,
I would have stayed for seven weeks,
I would have tacked up posters
and crawled into crack houses
with two thousand in my front pocket
and a knife in my back,

I would have searched every inch of sand,
slept and not slept,
learned a new language,

and I would have prayed to a god I don’t even believe in
hoping, hoping she’d only been kidnapped,
even raped would be okay,
tied to a post, her eyes swollen shut,
just please god
let us find her

and now, six months later,
I would let them call me “fascinating”
and I would get dressed and put on makeup
and I would not
cry in public
and I would not say
there’s no giving up.

I would say what you said,
that she was no different from anyone else,
and it would be a lie.

- Irene Latham