The faucet leaks in code.
Not Morse—older.
Something the bones understand.
Last night I dreamt of your hands
washing a glass I never owned.
The water circled twice.
I woke to a silence that had contours.
Edges. Ridges.
Your absence wears shoes.
After sleep halved me,
I sat with the branch in the sink—
not the one from the yard,
the one I imagined,
soaking through porcelain.
I said nothing to the absence beside me.
It said less.
You once wore velvet in July,
claimed it kept the heat out.
Now the closet holds your joke.
Folds it, presses it, makes it forget.
Two birds crossed paths midair,
then didn’t again.
One was heavier.
I couldn’t tell which.
In the envelope:
four pills,
a paperclip,
a fortune: “you were never the stranger.”
In the window:
not you.
Not even reflection.
Just a pane waiting to become noise.
Your name unthreads from the spine of a book
I don’t remember reading.
I mouth the last line anyway:
a name is a map of what isn’t there.
You left something on the stove,
then left the stove.
It burned, quietly.
I liked the smell.
Tell me—
does the rain touch you where you’ve gone?
Or do you pass through it,
like heat through lace,
like the apology you didn’t say aloud
but planted in a cough?
Under the couch—
a receipt,
crease-folded like regret.
I trace the ink,
pretend I’m reading your last sentence.
I don’t know what it bought.
The fridge hums in your register.
G sharp,
like when you used to lie
by tuning your breath.
Someone rang yesterday.
Didn’t leave a message.
I called back anyway.
The number was missing a digit.
Still, the static sounded familiar.
I moved your mug to the shelf you never reached.
A small cruelty.
Or a shrine.
Depends on the hour.
I took the batteries out of the clock.
Time shouldn’t be this smug.
It kept counting your name.
There’s a draft by the door.
I blamed you.
Then sealed it with a sock, not yours.
Yours are in a drawer I can’t open without noise.
The photograph peeled at the edges, finally.
You said permanence is a myth people tell their shoes.
I walked a loop today,
found the same leaf twice.
It looked surprised.
Or accusatory.
Hard to tell with leaves.
The neighbor’s cat waits at my window.
Not for food.
She just watches like she knows,
what you didn’t say to me on purpose.
The bulbs outside bloomed wrong.
One yellow, one white, one refusing entirely.
In your notebook,
a list of places:
Marseille. Thassos. Red Deer.
Beside each, a number.
Beside Red Deer, nothing.
Your coat still smells like air conditioning.
Specifically the kind in cheap hotels.
You said you liked it.
It made you feel… what was the word?
Borderless?
Anyway, I washed it.
Now it smells like detergent.
I keep saying I’ll throw it out.
But you know me.
I keep things.
Even people.
Even the parts that hurt.