Breath on the Glass

The kitchen window does not forget.

You write a name with your finger on an evening of soup and rain, wipe it off with your sleeve, weeks go by.

And then one ordinary day the water boils, the window mists over and there it is again: the name, intact, floating in the steam as if the house had been keeping it for the next time you forgot it.

The finger's invisible grease, says science. The memory of glass, say I, who write names on windows so the cold days will hand them back to me.