Dead Things Don't Change

I wore Marcus's hat to the grocery store. His favorite brown fedora, smelled like his hair gel and the cigarettes he'd quit three years ago. People stared. I didn't care. Grief turns you into something else — not a person anymore, but this walking thing that goes through motions.

The store lights were too bright. Everything was too bright. I moved down the aisles like a zombie, arms stiff, eyes unfocused. Marcus had called himself that once, during his chemo. "Just shuffling along," he'd said, bald and gray-skinned, "waiting for whatever comes next."

I picked up a bag of spinach. Our anniversary dinner. He'd promised to make his spanakopita. That was six months ago. The spinach sat in our fridge until it turned to sludge, just like his promise.

At home, the cat waited by the door. Barnaby, Marcus's cat, not mine. He'd chosen me out of the shelter cats. Now he wound around my legs, mewling. I filled his water bowl, watched him drink. His pink tongue lapped, rhythmic and greedy. At least one of us was hungry.

I boiled water for pasta, dropped in the spinach. Steam fogged the kitchen window. Through it, I could see myself: the hat, the dead eyes, the slumped shoulders. I looked exactly like Marcus had those last weeks. A zombie before death even came.

The spinach wilted, surrendering to the heat. Everything breaks down eventually. Everything dies. Marcus knew that. He'd made me promise to keep living, but he hadn't specified how.

I took off the hat and set it on the counter. Maybe tomorrow I'd burn it. Maybe I'd wear it again. For now, I ate my spinach alone while the cat watched, and waited for something to change.