Gone Now

Three months the glass had been sitting

in the same spot on the shelf.

I'd moved around it.

I'm not going to call it anything.

It was a smudge—the oil from a thumb,

from his last morning here,

before the fight that ended contact.

This morning I wiped it.

Two seconds.

The cloth came away

with nothing visible on it—

just a slightly damp cloth,

and a glass that was now

the same as every other glass.

I stood there with the cloth in my hand.

The glass is in the rack.

Clean. Upright.

Not his anymore.

Not anything specific.

I keep thinking about the cloth.

Where the print went.

What I thought I was ready for.