Written by Ryan T. Pozzi
Anyone could excavate my search history and find a fossil record. Each layer holds every
question I ever asked about everyone and everything I couldn’t hold onto.
Search: what survives extinction
Search: can you talk to ghosts online
Search: is there a saint for missing sunglasses
Search: what if you dream about a house that doesn’t exist
Search: when to stop looking
Some questions are too old for Google. Some get passed down, handwritten in the margins of
library books, whispered between siblings after bedtime, or swapped in the quiet dark of a
blanket fort. Mostly, I’m searching for what’s missing: people who vanished without warning,
objects I lost and never found again, versions of myself long abandoned.
If there’s an afterlife, I hope it’s a lost and found where nothing stays lost forever.
Before there was a search bar, there were other ways to go looking. Searching was slower.
Answers came from grown-ups at the kitchen table, the librarian with her rolling cart, the
encyclopedia with its pages soft from years of turning. Sometimes the answers made sense.
Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes the questions trailed off and surfaced again at breakfast,
unchanged.
I asked my mother why people died and if the moon ever got lonely. At school, I wrote questions
for the librarian on little slips of paper: How long does a memory last? Do astronauts get
homesick? What happens if you forget someone on purpose?
The library was its own fossil bed, a place where every book carried evidence of kids who had
come before me: dog-eared pages, penciled notes, a gum wrapper used as a bookmark. I flipped
through the World Book looking for spells, but always found diagrams instead. On the
playground, rumors filled in what science left blank. Goldfish could be wished back if you
flushed the toilet twice, lost mittens grew into new pairs under the snow, rainbows were made
from the lost crayons in your backpack.
I lost things: a favorite toy, a friendship that faded when someone moved away, a photograph I
meant to keep but misplaced after the school year ended. The questions outlasted the missing
things.
Mostly, I learned to wait and wonder, to imagine. Before computers and search bars, the space
between not knowing and finding out was a wide, quiet place.
Then came the family computer, tucked in the corner of the guest room, humming and clicking
and tying up the phone line. I listened to the dial-up screech and watched the monitor flicker to
life, promising that anything could be found if you only typed the right words.
Search: what do you wear to a funeral
Search: how to write a eulogy
Search: why do I keep dreaming about people who aren’t here anymore
Search: is it normal to talk to someone after they are gone
I tried Ask Jeeves, AOL, whatever that browser was at the school library. The results loaded
slowly, sometimes freezing halfway, the advice half-baked and written by machines. I kept
hoping for a fix, or at least a way to feel less alone at two in the morning.
Sometimes, the answers only made things stranger. There was a website where you could email
the dead, a message board claiming dreams were just the spirit world’s way of keeping in touch.
For every question, a new layer of mystery.
Once, I found an old email thread from a friend who was gone and reread it again and again.
Their words waited for me, unchanged, even as everything else moved on. It was like hearing
footsteps in an empty house or finding a note in the dust, someone had been here, and the
message was for me.
No matter how fast the connection or clever the search terms, some things stayed out of reach.
Already, a new kind of fossil was forming: usernames I’d forgotten, passwords lost, emails to
people who’d never answer.
Now the search bar follows me everywhere. On the phone by my bed, at work, in line at the
grocery store, in every spare and silent moment. The questions come faster, the answers appear
instantly, but the feeling of not quite knowing never leaves.
Search: how to grieve a parent
Search: what to write in a sympathy card when words feel useless
Search: how to know if someone is really gone
Search: can a voicemail be haunted
Some reminders arrive uninvited. A calendar alert for a birthday. An old photo tagged by
someone else, looping back into view. A number saved in my contacts long after there’s no one
on the other end.
I scroll through old messages. I replay voicemails just to hear. Sometimes I compose emails I
never send, typing out what I’d have said if goodbyes actually worked.
Search: how to let go
Search: why do some questions keep coming back
Search: am I the only one searching
My digital fossil record grows deeper and more layered. The autofill remembers everything:
childhood wonders, late-night confessions, clumsy attempts at comfort, all the absences no
algorithm can explain. Did you mean how to un-lose someone?
I imagine an archeologist digging through these strata years from now. They’ll find the same
questions typed in different years, the same names half-erased and re-entered, messages started
but never sent. Maybe they’ll laugh at how lost I was or wonder what I was still hoping to find.
If someone ever uncovers my fossil record, I hope they find the stubbornness in every search, the
way I kept looking even when I knew some things would always be missing.
Search: what’s left after the searching
.
Ryan T. Pozzi is a writer and cultural critic who interrogates the stories we inherit about legacy, myth, and reputation. He brings a clear-eyed skepticism to questions of who shapes our understanding of history. His writing has been accepted by Rattle, Fjords Review, Northern New England Review, and Ponder Review, among others. He is also a 2025 Best of the Net nominee. Find him at ryantpozzi.com or on social media at @ryantpozzi.