pressed glass · 8 mm · c. 1932
pressed in a small steel mould in a town that made nothing else for thirty years. dark blue, almost black, until light goes through. eight millimetres across — small enough that a child cannot pick it up without licking a finger first.
it closed the cuff of a child's sunday-best blouse, one of seven identical buttons. the others left over the years, in cuffs and washing-machines and the gaps between floorboards. this one was found by your mother on the kitchen tiles, swept up with the dust, and put on the windowsill, and then in the tin.
glass remembers being liquid and is in fact still liquid, very slowly. it will outlast every fabric in this house. it will outlast the house. when held to a window at the right angle it briefly becomes a small dark moon.
field-note · weight: almost none. but if you drop it on the tile it rings, briefly, like a bell two rooms over.