Not Coming Back

I knew your page by its smallest changes: a new photograph, one sentence removed,

Your eyes meet mine, then choose the windowpane, as if the rain has said what I could not. I know affection cannot be a chain,

There's a word for the way your coffee cup still sits on the second shelf where no one else would put it—

I woke before you and did nothing about it. The radiator ticked. Your shoulder rose and fell.

My hands still set the table for two. Not every night—just Thursdays, when my hands forget

We don't say I love you anymore. We say: your phone is at eleven percent. We say: I picked up the thing