All the Missing Girls

by Megan Miranda

it’s too easy to notice how insignificant you are. How quickly you might go from something to nothing. How one moment you can be a girl laughing in a field of sunflowers, and the next, a haunting face on a poster in a storefront window. How terrifying, empty and hollow, and then: how absolving.

There were tiny moments, like this, when the grief came on strong out of nowhere. It was sneaky, and tricky, and you couldn’t see it coming until it was already there. It came with the mundane, simple tasks: My mother would never be hanging pink streamers at my shower. I would never lean over to someone and conspiratorially whisper, My mother is crazy. She would never become a grandmother.

Tomorrow I’d pick myself up. Tomorrow there would be no more crying. Tomorrow I’d remember that I had kept going.

Saying, “I want Mom.” The most unreasonable request.

Even the strong are lonely. Even the adored are sad.

The truth is, I’m terrified of all I have to lose and how close I will always be to losing it. But it happened before. And I survived it.