Returned to Sender

The parcel locker key was warm from his palm,
a brass moon chipped to crescent. He fed it the code,
heard the throat of the wall click, and there—
a box with her old handwriting rendered by a font
close enough to bruise.

Inside: an enamel mug with a hairline crack
like frost on a lake at first light, a receipt spool
unzipping a pale intestine of dates and totals,
and the note the memorial AI sent each dawn:
grief check-in complete. how are you holding?

He replied as always—politely, like at the door
to a neighbour’s wake—
and somewhere a courier wheeled into motion.
She had promised tea, one winter, the good kind,
but money thinned and time turned to lint.

Now the mug arrives. Then a scarf she never posted.
Each fulfilment drains a pocket he cannot see;
a ledger clicks from credit to debit, small as cutlery.
He keeps answering, because the machine
asks in her tempo: the upward lilt on “okay?”,
the pause she used when choosing a word.

On the fridge, an exam upload window blinks—
their daughter, hair in a fist, whispering percentages.
Cloud credit: low. A minus opens in the margin.

He writes, stop, to the morning message.
The screen returns an error—soft, apologetic.
He opens the app’s back room, the switchyard of toggles,
and finds the blunt red DEL—
dust-ringed, as if a cup once stood there and kept the paint clean.

He holds the mug to his lip. The crack does not leak.
Outside, the locker clicks shut of its own accord.
He keys in the code for her exam,
watches the bar inch across like a small, stubborn tide,
and feels the cupboard of promises empty to air.