Still Left

This morning my hand went left again.

Cabinet open, mugs on the right

where they've been for two years,

and my arm already extended

into the wrong half of the shelf

before I was fully awake.

I stood there a second.

Hand in the air on the left side,

where there is nothing—

shelf liner, a gap,

the specific emptiness

of a place where something used to be

in an apartment I no longer live in.

Two years.

I don't even know which one.

I've been in four apartments.

In two of them the mugs were left.

In one there was just a shelf above the sink.

The hand doesn't know the difference.

It just knows something was there,

and goes toward it,

and finds nothing,

and I reach across and get the mug

and make the coffee

and forget about it

until next time.