When the Toys Remember Us

In the corner of the room, where dust learns patience,

they sit—

the toys—

keepers of a language once spoken fluently

by small hands and fearless hearts.

They do not complain about the quiet.

They have survived louder losses.

A wooden train rests mid-journey,

its wheels frozen between destinations

no map remembers anymore.

Once, it carried kingdoms made of carpet,

tunneled beneath chairs,

crossed mountains of folded blankets.

Now it waits,

faithful as memory,

for a whistle that no longer sounds.

The teddy bear leans against the wall,

one eye stitched slightly lower than the other,

giving it a look of eternal understanding.

It knows secrets.

It has absorbed tears without asking questions,

has been hugged through fevers, nightmares,

and the strange loneliness children feel

before they learn the word for it.

Its fur is thin where love was strongest.

A doll lies on her back, staring upward,

her plastic smile unchanged by years.

She once drank invisible tea,

attended weddings of imagination,

listened patiently to stories that had no endings.

She was a doctor one day, a queen the next,

proof that a child’s world

has no ceilings.

Now she listens to silence,

still willing,

still ready.

The puzzle pieces remain half-assembled,

their edges dulled by urgency.

Once, they taught small fingers patience,

taught the joy of fitting,

of belonging.

Now a few pieces are missing,

lost under furniture or time,

just like parts of ourselves

we don’t remember losing.

A ball rests in the corner,

scuffed and quiet.

It once flew like a promise,

chasing laughter across the yard,

rolling into scraped knees and triumph.

It remembers the sun better than we do,

the way afternoons stretched endlessly,

as if tomorrow were a rumor

not yet proven true.

The toys have learned

that children grow upward and outward,

leaving behind entire universes

without realizing it.

They understand abandonment

without bitterness.

They know that love does not always return

in the same shape it left.

At night, when the house exhales,

the toys do not move—

but if memory had footsteps,

this room would echo.

Each toy hums softly

with the ghost of play,

with the warmth of hands

that once believed them alive.

There is a toy car with a missing door,

brave and incomplete.

It survived crashes staged for excitement,

dives off tables meant to test gravity.

It taught a child

that breaking does not always mean ending.

Sometimes it means becoming a story

worth telling longer.

The crayons lie dried and broken,

colors shortened by enthusiasm.

They remember drawing families

bigger than life,

houses with too many windows,

suns that smiled on command.

They remember when art was not judged,

only felt.

A plastic dinosaur stands frozen mid-roar,

guardian of imaginary lands.

Once, it defended the weak,

challenged the impossible,

died heroically only to rise again

five minutes later.

It remembers a time

when fear was thrilling,

not heavy.

The toys do not resent the phone

that replaced them,

the screens that glow brighter than imagination.

They simply wait,

because waiting is what love does

when it understands time.

Sometimes an adult enters the room,

older now, slower.

Their eyes catch on the shelf.

For a moment,

they are not adults at all.

They are eight years old,

kneeling on the floor,

building a world that felt permanent.

That moment is enough.

The toys live for that pause—

that breath where memory touches now,

where responsibility loosens its grip,

and the heart remembers how to play

without apology.

The toys know something

we often forget:

that joy does not need permission,

that imagination is not childish,

only unpracticed.

They know that growing up

does not require leaving everything behind—

only choosing what to carry forward.

Eventually, the toys will be boxed,

donated, passed on.

They will learn new names,

new hands,

new laughter.

And they will love again

without comparison.

Because toys are not owned—

they are borrowed

by moments,

by childhoods,

by hearts not yet guarded.

And when all the rooms change,

when time rearranges the furniture of our lives,

the toys remain what they always were:

quiet witnesses

to who we were

before the world asked us to be more careful.

They wait,

not for us to return,

but for us to remember

that once,

we knew how to be light.