remind us of what we are not now

as she moved through the morning rituals, coffee, run, wash... she began to understand. he'd taken the corpse of their relationship from where it had been lying on the floor and left in its wake only the stark truth of the chalk outline. what he had taken was gone and she couldn't name it except by inventory of what he'd left - the khakis, the oxford cloth, the tie she'd bought him to wear at dinner that night in the poconos. if he had taken books she wouldn't know it because she never knew what was on those shelves at all. absent the form of whatever had existed between them, there was so little to bear witness to its ever having existed at all. he had taken their cash, his guitar, that stupid jacket - and had left the ring, in a soapdish by the sink in the guest bathroom on the 2nd floor.