Sunday at 4am, the shop smells like hide and paste

Couldn't sleep, came down to the bench and just ran my fingers over a calfskin I've been saving for a customer's father's journal. There's something about that hour when the house is quiet — the leather feels less like material and more like a held breath, waiting for someone to turn the page. I keep thinking about all the hands that will touch this thing after mine: the one who writes, the one who reads forty years from now. It's 4am and I'm being sentimental about a cowhide. Anyway, anyone else ever fall in love with the before of a thing — the raw edge before it becomes what it's meant to