Cherokee Sequoia

The Disappearance of Security

At first I thought about her every day, every second. She crowded my worst nightmares and clouded my daydreams. I Googled her name several times a day hoping to see a positive update in her disappearance and news that she had returned home. However, as time aged and as her whereabouts got more confusing, she began to fade from my daily monitoring, but not from my thoughts. I had never met her, never came across the people who loved her, but little by little, Phoenix’s story merged into my own – a young, Black woman from the St. Louis suburbs who loved hard and trusted easily.