Inventory of a Closing Shop

The owner counts the bolts of cloth by lamplight, each color a decade he can no longer afford to keep folded. Dust settles on the brass register like snow that never agreed to melt.

Outside, the street learns a new silence— no bell above the door, no thread of conversation spooling into evening. He runs a palm across the cutting table, its grain worn smooth by other people's measurements.

Tomorrow the sign comes down, the windows go blank as a held breath. Tonight he leaves one light burning for the moths, those small believers who never read the hours posted on the glass.

What he keeps is not the shop but the weight of scissors in his hand, the way good wool resists, then yields— a lifetime of giving things the exact shape someone asked for.