Toppie the Elephant

There was once a pink plaid elephant whose trunk I kissed to sleep. I won her fair and square— a coloring contest, Top Value Stamps. She slept beside me every night. Her trunk, softened by chewing. One ear, forever folding from a bent wire frame. And a stab wound— just below her left flank— a potato peeler, courtesy of my sister. Then one day, she vanished. We moved. Boxes swallowed childhood things. Grown-ups said nothing. I missed her for fifty years until one day I typed her name into eBay— a whisper into a well not expecting an answer. And there she was— chewed trunk, crumpled ear, scar stitched in the same exact place. Time is a circle. And miracles wear plaid. I held her in both hands, afraid to blink. She’d come back. She had always been coming back.