Paperclips and Melted Crayons
Paperclips
It was Mother’s Day, 1972. Frannie was five, living in a foster home called Lost & Found.
The light of dawn crept through the blinds, gently waking the world from the quiet of the night.
She turned to her right: row upon row of identical beds. To her left, another line of them. White sheets, blue blankets, metal frames—all the same. Just like the loneliness that clung to the room.
The faces were different, each holding its own story, but they all shared the same ending in this transient place.
She rose from her bed and walked over to a large donation box against the back wall. The walls were old, the paint peeling, stained with the imprints of longing fingerprints. A jagged crack snaked from the top of the wall down to the box, deep and crooked, as if it, too, carried its own weight of brokenness.
A sign hung on the box: Donations.
She dug through it with her small hands, hoping to find something—a treasure that might make her feel less alone.
No dolls.
No cards.
No secrets meant only for her.
Just forgotten things for forgotten girls.
At the bottom, she pulled out a box of colorful paperclips.
She sat down, cross-legged, her back against the wall, and opened the box. One by one, she pulled out the paperclips, their metal surfaces catching the light. She clipped together scraps of her stories, each one held by a small, cold clasp. Then she linked them, one after the other, forming a long chain.
She thought the paperclips were Rapunzel’s hair.
If it were long enough, she could slip it through the window, escape, and find freedom.
Each color was something she was.
Each hue a wish, a different dream.
And something in her softened—
the need to escape turned to hope.
If paperclips could hold whole families together,
maybe she wasn’t broken,
just waiting to be gathered.
Maybe, somewhere beyond the chain,
her real mother was waiting—
with warm arms and eyes that knew her face.
She kept the chain.
All that changed was her name.
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