The Lost Boys by Diane Henningfeld

November, and there they are, on the front page of the Daily Telegram, the three boys whose father didn’t bring them home for Thanksgiving. The newspaper ages their pictures each year and sometimes it feels like the boys are children of far away friends who send us photos each Christmas. We watch the boys grow, their little faces changing with time. We imagine them riding their bikes down Maple Avenue, or buying Hershey Bars at Jerry’s IGA. Soon they’ll be old enough to drive. They’ll play football for the Bulldogs, rent tuxes for their senior proms, go off to Michigan State. We dream the lost boys alive. Each year the mother emerges from her dark house to beg us to search for them everywhere. We look in cupboards and fields, on the banks of the river, under piles of leaves. They are with us always, these lost boys, our holiday tradition.

Diane Henningfeld grew up in Howland Corners, Ohio, next door to her father’s hardware store. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Storm Cellar, Dunes Review, Michigan Poet, and is forthcoming in Raintown Review.