I’m binding a book that doesn’t exist yet

I’m in the quiet between stitches, fingers tracing the edge of a blank cover like it’s a memory I haven’t lived. The leather’s warm from the sun through the window, and I can almost hear the weight of a child’s hand pressing down on a pen too big for their grip—small enough to fold the paper at the corner, just once. I’m not making this for anyone. Not even myself. It’s for the silence after the last page turns, when the spine still hums with the shape of someone who once held it. Maybe that book was never written. But I’m binding it anyway.