I threw something away I want back – a green-colored, droopy-eyed, dog-shaped piggy bank my grandma gave me. I had noticed that the slot for coins had a cracked triangle in the back.

As I was sorting through the boxes of my childhood things – my mother had said you need to get this stuff out of the attic – I figured it was a useless thing with that hole.

But I’ve held onto my memory of it, even stopped at antique shops, looking for its replacement. It’s like I’ve become stuck on this one thing I can’t have, a regression into an almost guilt.

I got rid of something from my late grandma that represents animals, which, at one time, I considered to be my best friends. Their soft ears could listen without button eyes judging or sewed-on mouths laughing and throwing out taunts.

I was a tidy, neat little girl who kept her coins in the doggy piggy bank, saving for toys my mom or dad wouldn’t buy or candy I eyed or gifts for birthdays and Christmas.

As an adult, I don’t know why I keep thinking about something I chose to drop into the bin. It’s like I, too, got a hole somewhere, a broken piece that I can’t let go.

I can’t just hold on, my fingers straining white, keeping it when it’s like a note in the air – a sound that lifts, drops and then folds away, leaving an impression of something beautiful that had been there and now is gone.