In Chuuk Lagoon between 1900 and 1950, a young man courting in secret carved a long wooden wand called a wuun — a love stick — with a barbed and hooked notch pattern unique to him alone. At night he would pass the stick through the thatch wall to the woman he courted; she read its sequence of hooks by touch in the dark, a private code confirming his identity without a word or a light. The stick itself was dense island hardwood, oiled by hand until it took on a low warm sheen. Every notch was cut close and small, meant to live under a fingertip rather than an eye — an intimate, tactile object built for darkness, not display.