It Still Drives Around Her Bed

the little vacuum runs itself at 2am because that's when i scheduled it back when i worked early, and i never changed it, so most nights i'm awake and it isn't and we pass like that. tonight i watched it the whole loop. it does the kitchen, the hall, bumps the couch leg twice like always, and then it gets to the corner by the window and it slows down and curves around a clean empty patch of floor like something's there.

her bed was there. i took it to the shelter in march, washed, because someone's puppy could use it. the vacuum learned the room with the bed in it, mapped around the soft thing it couldn't climb, and i guess it just kept the map. it still thinks she's there. it's been politely driving around a dog that's been gone three months.

i know it's just stored coordinates. i know if i factory reset it the corner would disappear and it would roll right through. i'm not going to. it's the last thing in the house that still expects her. i sat on the floor in the path of it until it nudged my knee and turned, patient, like it does, and went around me too, and for a second we were both just keeping her spot warm.