MargenClearing out my mother's house, I found that she had kept, in a rusted biscuit tin, every spare button from shirts that no longer existed.
There were dozens. Mother-of-pearl, bone, cloudy plastic. Each one had belonged to a garment, and each garment to a day, and each day to someone who put it on without thinking that any of it was worth keeping.
My mother thought it was worth keeping.
I sat on the floor with the tin in my lap while outside it grew dark without asking permission. I did not cry. I just passed the buttons through my fingers, one by one, like someone praying who cannot remember the words.
In the end I kept three. Not the best ones. The ones that fitted inside a closed fist, so I could walk out of the house without letting go of it altogether.