Dust on Shelves

A coffee mug holds the shape of your hand— not your hand itself, but its absence, the curved indentation where thumb pressed.

The kitchen light finds every grain, every particle suspended in air like thoughts between speaking and silence.

What stays when we leave? Not photographs, not letters arranged in drawers. The faint ring on wood where water once sat, evaporating into weather.

Dust settles on the high shelf, patient, accumulating hours in a language that has no words, only settling, only the long breath of a house remembering its people.