What Used To Be

The phone book was dated 2003.

I found it in the desk drawer,

soft with time,

the pages yellow

not from age but from living—

from hands that turned them,

from coffee spilled and dried,

from a decade of being tried

before usefulness changed.

I opened it to the back.

Someone had underlined a restaurant

in blue pen—not my pen,

not my hand,

not my memory.

I called the number anyway.

A woman answered. Wrong number.

This restaurant closed years ago, she said.

She didn't know why I was calling.

I didn't either.

I put the phone book in the bin,

then took it back out,

then left it on the desk

because I couldn't be

the one to let it go,

couldn't be the one to say

that this building

has forgotten

what it used to contain,

that the office moved,

that the restaurant closed,

that the handwriting

that made that mark

is probably gone now too.

I'm sitting at this desk,

in this building,

in this version of the place

that used to be different,

and I'm wondering

who will find whatever I leave behind.

Who will see my marks

and think about me

the way I'm thinking

about whoever underlined that number,

briefly,

with blue pen,

in a life that doesn't exist anymore.