What Isn't Here

There is a cup on the table.

Beside it, nothing.

The chair remains where it was, angled slightly toward the window, as if someone had only stood for a moment.

No one moves it.

Morning enters carefully.

Light reaches the floor, the wall, the edge of the table, then stops.

I make coffee for one.

I do not think about the second cup.

I do not think about why it is still there.

Outside, a car passes.

A dog barks twice.

The refrigerator hums.

Small sounds become enormous when no one answers them.

I open the window.

Cold air comes in.

Nothing leaves.

There are photographs I no longer look at
and a name I have stopped saying.

Not because I forgot.

Because saying it would give the room something to hold.

So I leave the sentence unfinished.

I leave the door open.

I leave one side of the bed untouched.

At night, the house settles around the absence as though learning its weight.

And sometimes, just before sleep, I reach across the darkness and find exactly what I knew would not be there.