The Interruption

There's a stack of boxes by the front door

and a layer of dust on the things I thought I loved.

I pulled a paperback from the bottom of the bin,

the spine uncracked after the first three chapters.

Page ninety holds a yellowed slip of thermal paper,

a receipt for a medium black coffee

from a shop that’s been a bank for three years now.

The ink is fading, a ghost of a Tuesday morning

when I thought I had the time to sit and care

about a fictional woman’s house in Maine.

I can’t remember why she left her husband,

or why I thought the ending mattered enough

to keep the book through two different zip codes.

I just remember the phone ringing in my pocket

and the way I never picked the story back up.