The Missing Spoon

There is always one spoon missing. Not lost. Missing. The drawer remembers its shape.
Between the ladle and the measuring cups is a gap precise enough to carry an absence. The forks do not seem bothered.
The knives continue their silver conversations. Only the empty space insists on being counted. I imagine the spoon living another life.
Buried beneath potting soil.
Sleeping in the backseat of a car.
Resting at the bottom of a river that has forgotten every name it was given. Meanwhile the drawer keeps its place set. Perhaps this is how memory works.
Not by preserving things.
By preserving the room they once occupied.

Qasim Kiyani is a poet writing from Pakistan. His work focuses on the intersection of domestic space, memory, structural design, and the uncanny.