I am standing outside the front door of my rowhouse, having locked the door securely a moment before.

I am unable to find my keys. 

They are not in my hand, on my pocket, clipped to my belt loop, stuck in the lock, or dropped on the ground beneath my feet. I search the depths of my canvas bag, and no, they are not there either. 

I try the door again, and yes, it was not an illusion; I did lock the door.

I am securely protected from entering my house, the house I just now left.

I cannot retrace my steps, as a helpful inner voice suggests I do, because I didn’t leave the front of my house and I didn’t—and now can’t—go back inside. 

The keys have entered loss space, the place where possessions continue to exist when they cannot be found. From loss space, they taunt me in their tinny far-off voices: “I still exist. You can’t see me, but I am still here. I have not gone. You just can’t put your hand on me. Come get me. I’m right here. Keep looking, forever if necessary.”

It is not consoling that today, I do eventually find the keys, draped across the twigs of a dusty boxwood that grows in a large ceramic pot to the side of my front steps. Apparently I flung them there after I locked the door. When, how, and why I do not know. 

This is how I know I am alive: I lose things. The afterlife, I suspect, will be far more predictable and logical. And it will have all the possessions in it that I have ever lost, lined up, tagged and labeled, looking complacent. It is not they who are lost, after all, it is me.