There is a table by the window. I eat there, I sleep about four feet from it, and every night after work I clear the plates off it and I sew. My neighbors know the sound of the machine by now. I think they have stopped minding it.

I started the year my house went quiet. Nobody said anything cruel to me. That is the part people never believe. It was just that the phone stopped ringing, and the seat at the table stopped being mine, and I learned that a person can be pushed out of a family very gently, without anybody ever raising their voice.

I was nineteen. I did not have the words yet. I had a lot of feelings and no way to put them anywhere.

Then somebody I had never met sent me a message at two in the morning asking if I still made them. She told me she was moving out of her parents house that week and she wanted something to carry her things in that did not feel like running away.

I think about her every time I start a new one. I think about all of you. I picture the bus, the dorm, the first day at the new job, the walk home. I sew like the bag has to hold more than it does.

Every bag ships with the spool of thread I used to make it. Keep it. If the bag ever tears, you already have what you need to fix it, and I think that is the whole point.