Lost belonging

One person's journey to discovering the power of hope and resilience in the face of a lost belonging.

The Procrastinators’ Weekly Writing Prompts: Wild

Out of 4 prompts, I picked up "Prompt 2" and decided to go with "lost belonging"

Prompt 2: Here are a few titles of poems or words I picked up during the event. Pick one of more of them as title for a poem or a piece of prose.

· Scale

· How do you know when to run?

· Dust

· Quiet

· lost belonging 

Image from Oro Monaco

I was always the forgetful type, the one who would leave things behind without a second thought. Keys, wallets, and phones were a constant source of stress in my life, but I had learned to cope with it. I had always managed to retrieve my lost belongings eventually, whether it was from the couch cushions or a forgotten coat pocket.

But one day, I lost something that couldn't be replaced so easily. It was a Gold chain that had been handed down to me by my grandmother, a delicate chain with a small charm that held a special meaning for our family. I had worn it every day for years, the weight of it becoming so familiar that I hardly noticed it was there.

The day I lost it, I had been rushing to catch a train. I remembered feeling the charm catch on my sweater as I hurried down the stairs, but I didn't stop to check it. It wasn't until I was already on the train, halfway to my destination, that I realized it was gone.

I felt a pang of panic in my chest, a sinking feeling that something precious had been irretrievably lost. I retraced my steps in my mind, trying to remember when I had last seen it. Had I taken it off and set it down somewhere? Had it slipped off my neck without my noticing? I had no answers, only a growing sense of despair.

For days, I searched for the chain, scouring my apartment and retracing my steps around the city. I asked friends and strangers alike if they had seen it, but no one had. I began to wonder if I would ever see it again.

In the end, I never did find that gold chain. It remained a lost belonging, a hole in my life that could never be filled. But I learned something important from that experience: that even the smallest things can hold great value, and that it's important to appreciate and cherish what we have while we still have it. And though the chain was gone, the memories and love that it represented remained with me always.