nobody marked the day. there was no last entry, no final shopping list, no postcard signed off with a flourish. the pen was put down and the morning carried on. the keyboard was already warm.

now your hand is unreliable on paper — the letters bunch, fall, refuse the line. it surprises you. you remember, when you were small, copying out an entire poem to see how the words felt under the pen; you could still feel the verb at the wrist. that wrist is somewhere else now.

this is not a tragedy. typing has its own grace: small even sounds, an honest speed. but somewhere a particular handwriting has reached its last sentence, and you did not notice the punctuation.