It was empty.
I low-key searched the rest of the house over the next few weeks, subconsciously aware of a sense of emptiness, something missing.
I found stuff. A spring-loaded syringe. A plastic potato. Half a tiara. Primary colors grimed over.
But I remembered elaborate tea sets, a feast of plastic foodstuffs, makeup kits, varied utensils, toolboxes, zoos, benches and easels...
Somewhere between two moves and a lockdown, pretend play had just... gone.
Soon, the drawings will be gone, then the dresses, then the books...
What do we hold on to, really?
Memories? A time of half-imagined simplicity and innocence, joy?
Or, as all marketers know, to possibility.
Everything was possible.
Soon, it will be a fantastical dreamscape with no relationship to reality... but it will still serve its purpose.
Happiness, in any way you can get it... still works.