Sometimes, I hear them. The other children. They’re playing. I think they’re playing. But when I try to find them, there’s nothing. I’ve been here since 1836 when the highborn built the workhouse for children like me.

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But the town has changed, so many people, but none stop to think of all that were here before; I don’t even have a home anymore; they pulled it down in 1968.

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I’m looking for my mother. I won’t give up. They told me she’d come back, the Matron, the Guardians in their fine clothes; she said she’d come back. They took me to a big room with long rows of beds, made me work the looms, taught me letters, but still she never came. I was a good boy, did all they told me to do, my mother would have been proud.

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It’s so hard to remember her face now. It’s all fuzzy, like my breath on a cold pane of glass. I just remember she was warm, smelled like bread.

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I get so tired, waiting. If you hear my weeping, give me a kind word, remember me and all those like me who are part of the history of this town.