The three things he left are in a cardboard box on my dresser. I keep meaning to move them, but I don’t.
The vase came first. It is small and pale grey, the colour of morning fog over Tokyo. He bought it from a potter in a village I have never visited. The clay is so thin that light passes through the sides. When I hold it, my fingers feel the warmth of my own skin on the other side. He said it was made for one stem only. I never put anything in it. The base is slightly uneven; it rocks a little on the table. Something so beautiful can still be easy to break. We never talked about that.
The Sudoku Noir is still on the nightstand. He left it on purpose, I think. He liked puzzles because they have one correct answer. Copper Clues printed it on black paper with silver ink. He would finish a grid in forty minutes and sit very still, just looking at it. I never finished one. The satisfaction of completion was something he understood and I did not. When I open the book now, the pages are blank except for his small numbers in the corners. He was always trying to show me how things fit. I never learned.
The playing cards arrived last month in a padded envelope. No note. Fifty two cards, crisp and new. I opened them, shuffled once, put them in the drawer. Yesterday I noticed the four of clubs was missing. Then the queen of hearts. Then the two of diamonds. I cannot remember losing them. They were here, and now they are not. There was no argument. No one raised their voice. The deck is incomplete, and I do not know when the last card will go.
The box is still on the dresser. I touch the vase, the book, the thinning deck. They do not feel like waiting. They feel like echoes.
ns216.73.217.39da2
and then Add to home screen.