The letter on the table
is one you know,
without reading,
just like the frown
on his face,
which you know the meaning of
seconds after being
introduced to it.
The torn envelope,
the two terse folds,
the lines of type
in the neatest lines,
some of them
formed into his name;
other to a date he’ll leave,
still more to the
place he’ll leave for.
He follows
when you run from it;
you stand in silence
in the back garden,
hands almost holding.
He smokes a cigarette,
kisses your hair,
offers to make dinner.
A moment of still
after the door closes
behind him;
a breeze that carries
the smell of the first
lit chimney of the fall.
Slumped against
the kitchen counter,
you watch him cook;
across the table,
he watches you
slide food around your plate.
A sigh of relief
when he puts his hand
over yours;
a small clatter
when you drop the
fork.
It is not until bed that night
when he mentions it again,
only to say that
now that he is leaving,
you will have to learn to drive.
Heather Whited lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland State University. She graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2006 with a degree in creative writing and later worked in Japan and Ireland before relocating to the Pacific Northwest from her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.