The Toy

“It’s just a toy,” she says to her inconsolable daughter.

When she was her daughter’s age, halfway across the world, she had lost a blue shovel at a beach in Taiwan. It was cerulean blue with scalloped edges, and it had been swallowed by the ocean. It was the first of many losses her heart would come to endure.

“You’ll get over it soon,” she says, but she knows that’s a lie.