The Second Toothbrush

I keep meaning to throw it out. Blue, frayed at one corner, standing in the cup like a guest who has not been told the party ended. Mine leans away from it. I did not arrange this. Plastic finds its own grief. A toothbrush is the most honest thing you can leave. It says: I was here twice a day. It says: I expected to come back. I have thrown out your letters, the playlist, the photo from the pier. Big things. Loud things. Easy, almost, the big things — they announce themselves, they ask to be grieved. It is the small blue object by the tap that catches me, mid-morning, ordinary, holding my own brush and finding I have started, without deciding to, to cry over plastic, over the worn place where your thumb went, over how a body leaves a shape in everything it touched on the way out.