School photo, found after the Joplin tornado

“Joey, 4th grade, 1992” He’s been on the fridge since it happened, sneaking glances from underneath the cat magnet at our dinners, coffee habits, arguments. We posted him on the database of items found, hoping that someone would recognize his messy hair, Batman t-shirt, blue eyes, but no one answered the post or claimed him. Somewhere a childhood photo album is not quite complete, or a grandmother’s mantelpiece; an uncle’s wallet. One afternoon I got restless, flipped through my old yearbooks, trying to find him, looking to see how he might have aged: did he lose the chubby cheeks? dye his hair? how long did he have to wear braces? But he’s too young to have passed me in the halls, the picture just a stranger, a small reminder of the whirling aftermath when Joplin was clutching at scraps: everything displaced, even this poor kid who doesn’t even know he’s lost.