Your towel hangs on the nickel hook where you leave it for the last time, still damp and the shower dripping. Didn’t you promise to call the plumber, or tinker with the pipes again yourself? You fixed it once. I thought our fixes would take. There were promises. There are repercussions.
The pepper mill is no longer on the stove top where I always leave it after I cook your dinner and season it the way you like. Instead, after wiping down the kitchen counters as you think about the next day’s plans, it is lined up by the back splash where you set it next to the coriander and the dill, the bay leaves and the tarragon.
You are a stickler for order. I’m uncertain whether I will miss that, or revel in the freedom of my own creative chaos.
The bedroom closet holds the tuxedo my husband wore at our wedding that no longer fits and hangs zipped and airless in a black bag. Beside it is a sport coat that you brought into our marriage, though you pack everything that is smart and expensive, everything that serves you, everything you are used to taking on the road, so used to the road that I wonder if this is all routine.
Eventually the tears will dry. The strangeness will ease.
How quickly you depart. How accustomed I am to silence.
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