Elegy for the Unkept Room

The room is still here.

That is the first mistake -

to believe loss requires disappearance.

The walls hold.

The window opens the same fraction each morning.

The light arrives at the same angle,

touches the same part of the floor,

then withdraws without hesitation.

Nothing has been removed.

And yet -

there is a space that does not align.

A chair where no one sits,

not empty, but unused in a way

that feels deliberate.

The air carries a memory of shape.

Not scent -

something quieter,

like the outline of a gesture

that was repeated often enough

to remain after the body has gone.

I move through it carefully.

Not out of respect.

Out of habit.

There are objects that still belong to a system

that no longer functions.

A cup placed where it was always placed.

A book left open at a page

that will not be finished.

Dust gathers differently now.

It does not settle evenly.

It collects in places that suggest interruption -

edges, corners, the space beside things

rather than on them.

I do not clean it.

It feels like a record.

At certain hours,

there is a shift I cannot name.

Not a sound,

not a movement,

but a correction in the room’s posture,

as if something has remembered itself

for a moment

and then stopped.

I do not look up when it happens.

Looking would require

believing there is something to see.

Instead, I wait.

The room returns to its current arrangement

with the same quiet consistency

it has maintained since the absence began.

There is no event I can point to.

No moment when the loss declared itself.

Only the slow accumulation

of things that no longer answer

to the same conditions.

Time continues.

It passes through the room

without resistance.

It touches the walls,

the objects,

the dust,

and leaves everything in place.

Only one thing fails to follow.

I remain.

Not as I was,

but as something that has adjusted

to the absence

so completely

that it has begun to resemble structure.

The room is still here.

That is the second mistake -

to think that what remains

has stayed.