Prologue · unpublished

Ready to carry stories forward

You had one. A nightshirt from when you were small that your hands still remember. We make that one: nightwear for children, with room to grow, worn a thousand nights and softer with every wash.

Turn the page

Every night a child puts on the same small piece of cloth.
Years later, a hand still knows it.

Two children in sleepwear stand close together in a dark doorway, lit by a narrow band of light.

The first night the nightshirt is too big.

The sleeves are turned back twice and the hem touches the floor, and the child is asleep in it before the light is off.

It is too big all that winter. By the next it fits. By the one after, it is short in the arms, and nobody minds.

A child in a striped nightshirt lies in bed as morning sun casts the shadow of their hair across the sheet.

One night it does not go on, and nobody notices which night that was.

It is folded and put in a box, and the box goes up on top of a wardrobe.

It stays there a long time. The child grows up, moves out, moves again. Nobody decides to keep the box. Nobody quite decides to throw it out. The house keeps it.

A child in a long nightshirt stands beside an unmade bed in morning light, their own shadow on the wall behind them.

Years later the box comes down.

The child who wore it is grown, and there is a child in the house again, and it is nearly bedtime. Hands that have not touched this cloth since they were small find the buttons without looking.

Almost nothing survives a childhood. A few things do. Something worn soft enough that a hand knows it before a mind does.

Nobody sets out to make an heirloom. You make the thing well enough that it is still there when it is needed.

Ready to carry stories forward

Contents

Keep in touch