cabinet · cur · 16
— a small one, unnamed
VIII · 1903

cabinet of curiosities · case no. 16

a child's handprint

pressed into wet clay one summer afternoon and then forgotten on a shelf for a long while; later kilned, by accident, in a fire that took an outbuilding. the print survived the fire and is now small, durable, and faintly red where the heat got to it.

the child is now an old woman, or no longer alive, or both. the cabinet keeps the hand without keeping the child. nearby: the pressed orchid and the postcard; a small shelf of flat things.

field-note · believed to date from August 1903; acquired with the house.

orchid · dodo · child · memory · palimpsest

atlas · return