In the storage room the stick looked almost too modest for the label beside it: a narrow length of dark hardwood, oiled until the grain held light rather than reflected it. I spent an hour turning it only a few degrees at a time, watching each hook rise and disappear like a syllable spoken under the breath.
The pattern was not decoration
Each notch had a job. A hand could recognize the sequence without seeing it, which made the object intimate in a way a painted sign can never be. The design asks us to slow down: to read with the pads of the fingers, to understand that privacy can be shaped into wood.
A mark cut this small refuses the public stage; it belongs to the person who knows where to touch.