The Spare Button

Every new shirt hides a tiny envelope, a small transparent bag with a button nobody asked for.

You keep it in the kitchen drawer with the doubtful batteries and the keys to doors that no longer exist.

There it stays for years, solemn as a soldier never called up, holding without knowing it the entire possibility of disaster.

The shirt wears out, goes out of fashion, ends up a rag for cleaning windows. Not the button. The button stays in its envelope, intact, available, like certain reserves of affection we never use and which even so — what else could they do — hold us together.