Her Key, Still in My Drawer

i found it cleaning out the junk drawer. her spare key, the one she never asked for back when she moved out and left me holding two months of rent and a story about how it wasn't really her fault.

i know which apartment it opens. i know she changed nothing, she never changes anything, the lock included. i've thought about it more tonight than i want to admit. not to take anything. just to go in while she's asleep and move one thing. turn a picture frame. leave a cabinet open. let her wake up to a room that's slightly, unprovably wrong, the way i've been walking around slightly wrong for a year.

i won't. obviously i won't. i'm not that. i put the key back in the drawer twice and took it out twice.

the thing that scares me isn't that i want to do it. it's how detailed the plan already is. how i know the loose board by her door that creaks. how i've rehearsed being quiet.

i put it back a third time and shut the drawer. then i lay here in the dark doing the math on whether she's asleep yet.