The Commons in a Cardboard Box

Just inside the doors, where the hallway smells faintly of pencil shavings and lemon cleaner, a cardboard box waits. LOST & FOUND, a child once wrote in thick marker. In the morning rush it gathers a small platoon of orphans: a left-handed mitten, a dinosaur bottle with its sticker half-peeled, three navy sweaters pretending to be the same sweater. A child pauses, fingers the dent in the bottle as if it were a secret, and brightens. “Mine.” No applause. No policy. The world is a little more in order than it was a minute ago.