Talya Jankovits

Missing

Without thought, she called the child by another name. It happened so naturally, so easily, as if she were breathing. The very name oxygen; energizing, sustaining - a blood-pumping life source. And for a fleeting, warm, and lovely moment, she was syrup; drippy, sticky golden wonderful because everything was as it was, again.

As if the My Little Pony lunchbox would once again come off its designated hook. Retrieved from where it used to hang next to a pink and white polka dot windbreaker and a small purple backpack, stained blue at the bottom corner from a school project. That the lunchbox would be unzipped. Its empty belly was filled with crustless peanut butter sandwiches, a juice box, a plastic snack bag filled with someone’s favorite orange, fish-shaped snack.

As if two cups of chocolate milk would be filled. One with the straw placed unbent so a small pudgy hand could enjoy the satisfying vibrating whisper when she bent the plastic accordion neck, back and forth. As if the afternoon would quickly fill again with ballet lessons and gymnastics class. That the evening bath would once again have two heads needing scrubbing in a tub foaming with bubbles. And that once more, she would bounce from bed to bed like a tennis ball. Tucking comforters beneath jutting chins. Kissing first the older head of straight hair, and then a deep inhalation of sweet, creamy curls of her forever baby.  

With that one misstep, a slip of tongue, a familiar itch, she said it without any thought and all the pieces of her that she carried in a brown paper bag, like shattered glass gathered for trash bins, were whole again: shimmering and complete.

The grief that welled inside her like an eye of a storm, a cyclone of the darkest thoughts leering in the back corners of her mind, rushed out like a thunderous river through a narrow gorge. She felt lighter. She did not smile with joy or relief. It was more a perfect ordinariness. That they were all still untouched by tragedy, headlines and the empty gaping, grave of loss that they each crawled into. Staying inside until their bones turned to dust. A human sacrifice, just so they could bury something real.

But the wide eyes at her hips alerted her to the blunder, and the moment was as lost to her as the child whose name she mistakenly said. And just like that, the fourth hook in the mudroom still sat sharp and empty of pink windbreakers and purple backpacks with blue stains. Now they are kept in plastic bags marked evidence and a little girl sits at a table sipping chocolate milk out of a straw whose neck she keeps snapping back and forth, so the sound could envelope them all in something missing.

 

Talya Jankovits, a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, has been featured in numerous magazines, some of which she has received the Editor’s Choice Award and first place ranking.  Her poetry collection, girl woman wife mother, is forthcoming from Keslay Books in 2024. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters. To read more of her work you can visit her at www.talyajankovits.com, or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @talyajankovits.