Dave Bonta's "Missing" is a short, quiet poem about absence and how it can wear away a sense of self. It opens on a scene of emptiness: streets with nobody in them and every door closed. Nothing here welcomes the speaker or offers company.
The second stanza turns inward with a question: "who am I but this meeting / of loss and body?" The speaker seems to feel reduced to two things, the physical self and whatever has been lost. The poem never says what that loss is, so the title "Missing" could point to a person, a place, or something less definable. That openness lets the feeling stand on its own.
In the last lines, the speaker moves "among the poor" and turns "to a fine mist." It's a gentle, almost vanishing image, as if grief has made them barely there, drifting unnoticed through a closed-off world. The mood is lonely, hushed, and sorrowful, but also soft rather than angry.