# Love's Departure When you left, the door didn't creak. The hinges had learned to swallow sound. Even goodbye wore silence like a shawl. I watched your back grow smaller the way distance swallows what we love— a magician's trick perfected over centuries. The tea in your cup still held your warmth. I didn't drink it. Some things are temples we enter only to kneel, never to consume. You took the light with you. Not the sun—that crass, indifferent star still rose like it mattered, like nothing had changed. But the particular gold of afternoon that fell across your shoulder as you read, half-present, half-elsewhere— that gold went with you. Now the house speaks a language I don't understand. Echoes sound like accusations. Even the dust remembers you better than I do. I keep your absence polished. It gleams in corners. It grows teeth. Some days I think I hear you leaving still— the soft percussion of your footsteps, your hand releasing the doorknob, the air closing behind you like water, like prayer, like the only honest thing either of us ever said.