The doorknob they took

The doorknob was warm.

Polished to a shine

by ten thousand palms,

maybe more,

maybe a decade's worth

of people arriving and leaving,

touching the same brass,

the same small sphere.

I held it one last time.

Thursday afternoon.

Sun coming through the hallway windows.

The metal warm from the day,

from the light,

from all those hands

that came before.

By next week,

they said,

it would be gone.

Replaced with something new,

something shiny and unused,

something that didn't know

the weight of all those hands,

didn't remember

anything at all.

I could have taken it.

No one would have noticed.

But it belonged

to the building,

to the hallway,

to all the people

who'd touched it

before me.

I let go.

The knob was cool

by the time I reached

the parking lot.