By Charles M. Sumid     Copyright 2025     Written 1970

Monday morning, 7:43,
she kisses her daughter goodbye,
watches the school bus swallow another day.

On the counter: the lunch bag,
carefully packed,
sandwich cut in triangles (no crusts),
apple slices that won’t brown
(trick with lemon juice),
the note that says “Love you to the moon.”

It sits in its small pool of kitchen light,
perfect and abandoned.

By noon, the mother notices,
drives to school with the bag
like precious cargo.
Too late—her daughter already traded
half a granola bar for pudding,
borrowed quarters for milk.

The lunch goes home again,
sandwich triangles softening,
apple slices holding their color
like a broken promise,
back to the fridge for tomorrow’s amnesia.

Tuesday’s art project waits
in the printer tray:
“My Pet Dragon” in bright pixels,
purple scales, orange flames,
a castle made of french fries.

At school, Willow tells the teacher
she forgot. Again.
The paper holds its riot of color,
this masterpiece no one will pin
to the bulletin board.

December, first real snow,
recess at the fence:
“That’s mine!” Willow shouts,
pointing at the red mitten
frozen to the chain link,
thumb up like a tiny hitchhiker.
“From last year!”

The mitten, patient through three seasons,
filled and emptied
with rain, leaves, and finally snow,
has become school property now,
part of the playground’s permanent collection
of abandoned things.

In the laundry room,
the dryer stops its tumbling.
She pulls out uniforms, towels,
matched pairs of everything
except one blue sock with yellow heels,
alone in the drum’s silver curve.

She holds it up, sighs,
knowing somewhere Willow walks
through her day with one bare ankle,
having forgotten she only put on
one sock this morning—

this child who loses things
before they’re even lost,
who moves through the world so lightly
that objects can’t quite hold on,

as if she knows something
we’ve forgotten:
that nothing was ever really ours
to lose.