Lost Objects, Found People

Lost Objects, Found People

By [Asghar ali awan]ai

There’s a drawer behind the lost-and-found counter that smells faintly of old paper and rain. It’s small, cluttered, and mostly ignored — except by me.

Every weekday, I sit behind the counter at Union Street Station, cataloging the things people forget: umbrellas, scarves, gloves, earbuds, occasionally a phone. Most things are claimed within a day or two. But some — the quiet ones — stay longer.

You can tell a lot about people by what they lose.

The first thing I ever logged here was a left-hand glove, navy blue with a tiny hole near the thumb. I remember it because it was raining that morning, and the woman who dropped it came back later, dripping wet, her face pale with worry — not for the glove itself, but for what it represented.

“It was my husband’s,” she said softly. “He died last winter. I still wear his gloves when it’s cold.”

She took it from my hand like it was made of glass. Her fingers trembled. For a moment, I thought she might cry, but she just pressed the glove to her cheek and whispered, “Thank you.”

I’ve thought about her ever since. How we hold onto things not for their use, but for their memory. How love leaves fingerprints on fabric, scent on wool, warmth that lingers long after the person is gone.

The second item was a letter — sealed, never opened. It was found under a bench near Track 4, folded perfectly, edges soft from being carried. I shouldn’t have read it. I know that. But curiosity has a way of loosening morals.

Inside, the handwriting slanted delicately across yellowed paper:

“Dad,

I’m sorry it’s been so long. I’m coming home this week. I hope you’ll be there when I arrive. I’ll be wearing the green coat you bought me when I was fifteen. I’ve kept it all this time.”

There was no name. No date.

For weeks, I checked every person who passed through the station wearing a green coat. Young women with tired eyes, business travelers with earbuds in, mothers juggling toddlers and luggage. None of them looked like someone who had written that letter.

Eventually, I put it in an envelope labeled ‘Unclaimed’.

But every time a train pulls in, I wonder — did she ever give it to him? Or did she lose her courage along with her letter?

Then there was the watch — a silver wristwatch with a cracked face and a second hand that still twitched like it was trying to keep time, even though the rest of the mechanism had stopped.

A boy of maybe twelve turned it in. He’d found it by the vending machines.

When I asked if he wanted to leave his name, he said, “No. I just thought someone might miss it.”

A week later, an old man came in, walking slow with a cane. He didn’t ask for help — just shuffled up to the counter and said, “You wouldn’t happen to have found a watch, would you?”

When I showed it to him, his whole body stilled. He ran his thumb over the crack like it was a scar.

“It was my wife’s gift,” he said. “Fifty years ago.”

He didn’t smile, exactly — but his eyes softened, like a man remembering spring while standing in winter.

Before he left, he asked, “Did the person who found it leave a name?”

I told him no, but I think he already knew. He nodded once and whispered, “Tell them thank you.”

I’ve been here for six years. Six years of watching people lose things, find things, lose themselves, find each other.

Some stories end neatly, like the woman and her glove. Most don’t. But the drawer behind the counter — it’s like a museum of unfinished stories.

There’s a pair of children’s sneakers, size tiny, one lace frayed. A dog tag engraved with “Lucky”. A train ticket to a city that doesn’t exist anymore. A gold earring shaped like a crescent moon.

Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I line them up and try to imagine the lives they came from.

The child who outgrew his shoes and forgot them in the rush of growing up. The soldier who wore the dog tag before life took him elsewhere. The woman who lost her earring on a first date she wasn’t sure she wanted to go on.

I invent endings for them — not because I need to, but because maybe someone should.

Last month, I lost something myself.

Not an object — something harder to name. My mother passed away unexpectedly, and when I returned to work, everything looked the same, but nothing felt the same.

I found myself staring at that drawer one morning, wondering what would happen if I dropped a piece of myself in there too. Some token of her.

I took out the keychain she’d given me — a tiny metal heart with “come home safe” engraved on the back — and I slipped it into the drawer. No tag, no entry in the logbook. Just there, among the other stories.

A few days later, a man came to the counter. He looked exhausted — the kind of tired that goes deeper than sleep. He said, “I lost my daughter’s keychain. Silver, heart-shaped. She gave it to me when she moved abroad.”

I froze.

For a moment, I wanted to tell him the truth: that it wasn’t his. That it was mine. That I wasn’t ready to let it go.

But something in his eyes — that raw, hopeful ache I’d seen so many times before — made me reach into the drawer and hand it to him.

His hands shook as he took it. “You don’t know what this means,” he said quietly.

“I think I do,” I replied.

That night, I stayed late at the station. The lights flickered. The trains came and went. I sat behind the counter, staring at the now-empty space in the drawer.

For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel hollow. I felt… connected.

Maybe that’s what all this is — the reason we lose things. Maybe the universe misplaces pieces of us on purpose, just so someone else can find them and remember what it feels like to care.

Maybe, in the end, the lost things aren’t lost at all. They’re just waiting to find the right person.