I unlocked the door to our apartment.
At first, the apartment looked the same. The furniture was in its place, and the table was clear. There were no dishes in the sink and no glass left out to dry. The air felt unchanged. If I had been gone for only an hour instead of longer, I might not have noticed a thing.
I set my keys down and stood there, waiting for the sound or sign that another person was home.
It revealed itself slowly.
Her side of the closet was empty. It wasn’t disturbed or half-empty. Just space. The hangers were gone. Shoes were missing from the floor beneath them.
The bathroom held my items and the generic ones we both used. Her toothbrush was gone. The drawer where she kept her few important things was clean inside, just as it looked after someone finished a task.
A towel still hung on the hook beside the shower, slightly damp. The faintest scent lingered.
I had touched it without meaning to.
I stood there longer than I meant to.
There was no note. No envelope tucked away. No sentence was written to be found later.
Nothing that belonged to both of us was taken. The couch was still there. The lamp she never liked but never complained about still worked. What remained was practical, shared, and easy to replace.
What was gone was only hers.
I didn’t sit down. I didn’t open drawers to look for anything I might have missed. I didn’t pull out my phone. I stood in the middle of the room, letting the shape of things sink in, realizing that whatever conversation I had thought about having was already over somewhere else.
This hadn’t happened quickly. It hadn’t happened in anger. It had been decided, carried out, and concluded. I was the last to arrive.
By the door, one of the hooks was empty. I noticed it because it always held the same thing, and now it didn’t. I stared at it for a long time to register the absence, then moved on.
I didn’t see it again; until I was already in Bogotá.