There is a peculiar gravity to the small things we carry. A ticket stub, a cracked mug, a sentence underlined in pencil—they accrue meaning not by size, but by repetition. We return to them the way a tongue returns to a sore tooth.

I have kept a pebble from every river I have ever crossed. Each one is smooth now, polished by years of handling. I do not remember the names of all the rivers, but I remember the weight of leaving them.

Perhaps this is what memory is: not a ledger of events, but a collection of tiny anchors. We do not choose them. They choose us, and then they stay.