The George in the box

The box was tin, painted once, mostly rust now. Inside, one length of George, folded along the same creases for thirty years. The gold had gone the colour of weak tea.

Nobody wore it. It was kept the way some things are kept — not to use, to hold.

I did not ask where it came from. The answer is always the same, and it is not a place. It is a person, and the person is gone, and the cloth stayed.