Elaine

###He almost missed it, tossed into a box under the table, partially hidden by a tangle of dirty baby doll arms. It might have been the curve that hooked on one of his hoary memories. Shapes always pulled on his eyes demanding that he mentally march the outer edges of a piece of furniture, a toy, a tool - memorizing the angles and arcs so that he could draw them later, even years later.

###But it might have been the color. He rubbed that color into that wood when he was a boy. Layers of bees wax over the smoothly sanded surface made it chocolate-brown, warm-brown, remember-me brown and so he bent to pick it up and he remembered.

###His memory drew the rest of the lines, the part someone, somewhere had cut off. When he held it last it had perfect balance but now it was awkward, so much of it gone, the best of it gone, the toy of it gone. Gone with his childhood, his golden hair, his straight and agile fingers.

###He tossed it onto the litter of arms and hobbled off, a boyish grin nestled in his wrinkled face.