The Kettle

It still clicks off two minutes early, the way it learned from you — you never could wait for a full boil, you said nearly is the same as done. So now I drink it nearly. Tea the temperature of a held breath, of a room someone just left. I have read the manual. There is a setting for this, a small grey dial that would teach the kettle to forget you. I have not turned it. I tell myself this is laziness. It is not laziness. It is the last appliance in the flat that still does something the way you wanted, and I am not ready for a kitchen that has never met you, not yet, not while the windows still go dark at the hour you used to come home.