The Lost
& Found

Tote bag, canvas, left on the 11:40 train. Inside is a grocery list in your handwriting, for groceries you haven't bought yet. Eggs are underlined twice.

Found: 11:40 train, car 3 · 14 Mar

Handed in by a cashier in Lisbon: a receipt for one coffee, paid in full, dated next Thursday. She says the customer tipped well and told her not to worry about it.

Found: Cafe, Lisbon · Next Thursday

Every key on this ring opens a door in the same apartment. The apartment has one door. We have tried all fourteen keys, and every one of them works.

Found: Front desk · Unknown

Sunglasses, tortoiseshell, found folded on a park bench at noon. Through them the light looks like late afternoon in September. Two people on staff borrow them on Mondays.

Found: Park bench · 2 Sep

Inside a library copy of a cookbook we found a postcard addressed to whoever is reading it. It says the soup on page 112 needs more salt, and it hopes you are well.

Found: City library · Postmark smudged

Graphic T-shirt, black, size M, found folded on the front desk with the tag still on. It has been claimed eleven times. By morning it is always back on the desk, folded the same way.

Found: Front desk · Most mornings

Nobody has claimed the voicemail. It is forty seconds of someone's kitchen: a kettle, a radio, a person humming a song nobody here can name. We play it when the desk gets quiet.

Found: Voicemail box 7 · Unknown

A radio in the back office picks up one station after midnight. It reads the weather for a city we can't find on any map. Light rain, clearing by morning. So far it has been right about ours, too.

Found: Back office · Nightly

Lunch break, forty minutes, misplaced by someone on the fourth floor of an office in 2019. Recovered intact. If it's yours, describe the sandwich and the window seat and you can have it back.

Found: Office, 4th floor · 2019