Morning

I saw them off this morning.
Nothing formal.
A door, a few words,
the usual things said
as if they still meant what they used to.

They took what they needed.
Not much.
A bag, a coat,
the sense of somewhere else to be.

I stood there longer than I had to.
Not waiting.
There was nothing to wait for.

The latch closed.
It was a small sound.
It stayed.

Outside, the day went on
in the way days do,
light spreading without interest
in who is there to see it.

I thought of what might have been said
years ago,
and wasn’t.
Or was said badly,
and kept its shape.

It doesn’t matter now.

They will make their lives.
They will say my name or not.
Both are possible.

I can imagine them
in rooms I will not enter,
speaking easily,
as if nothing had been otherwise.

That is the part
I did not expect.

Inside, the house has settled.
Things are where they were,
but less so.

I move through it
as if I have misplaced something
and cannot remember what.

There is no scene to return to,
no moment that can be corrected.

Only this:
the door,
the sound it made,
and the fact
that it will not open for me again.