The Outline

My mother said it so casually—

they threw it away when they moved him.

Forty years in his pocket.

Forty years of leather wearing thin,

the bill compartments cracking,

the photos inside turning yellow,

and then: gone.

I'll never know what was in there.

The pictures, maybe. Or cards.

A receipt he couldn't throw away.

A note my grandmother wrote

that he carried until she died

and kept carrying after.

But it's the dust outline I can't stop seeing—

the rectangle on his dresser,

the shape of where it used to sit,

pressed into the wood

by the weight of decades,

by the habit of placing it there

every night,

removing it every morning,

that small ritual

of becoming himself

and then returning

to the place where he rested.

The outline is darker than the wood around it.

It's the only proof

that the wallet existed,

that it mattered,

that it held

something worth carrying.

And now it's gone,

and the outline will fade,

and I'll never know

what he kept close to his body,

what he thought about

when he felt the weight in his pocket,

what he couldn't bear

to leave behind.

I'm thinking about all the things

we carry and never tell anyone about.

I'm thinking about the dust

that will eventually cover

the place where it was.

I'm thinking about how we disappear

one small object at a time,

how they pack us up

and throw us away

while we're still alive to see it,

and how there's nothing we can do

but watch the outline fade.