Dust Settles

Light through the window thins— the hour when all departures feel final, when speech becomes unnecessary.

You left your coffee ring on my desk, brown circle aging into geography, a stain that means less each morning.

I've forgotten the exact shade of your voice, how it climbed toward questions, the small hesitation before you laughed. These gaps fill with weather.

Something persists though— not memory, something smaller, the shape of a chair you sat in, how the light found you there and turned you temporal, briefly permanent, briefly mine.

Now even that's forgetting to matter.