Metabolic Recession

The papaya sat on the counter, its skin mottled with yellow bruises like a healing bruise. Three days past ripe. Just like us, Mara thought.

"You forgot to buy spinach again," she said, not looking up from her phone. Her voice had that flat quality—the emotional equivalent of skim milk.

"I didn't forget." David stood in the doorway, tie already loosened at 6:47 PM. "I chose not to. It tastes like wet earth. We've had this conversation."

"We have a lot of conversations. They don't seem to take."

In the corner, the goldfish—or what remained of this month's goldfish, since the last one had gone belly-up after their anniversary dinner—swam in lazy circles. Its name was Survivalist. Mara had named it. David had found this funny, once.

The vitamin bottle on the windowsill caught the last of the evening light. Vitamin D3. The doctor had said they both needed it, living as they did in this apartment where the sun rarely reached anything except the dust motes dancing over the unpacked moving boxes, still taped shut after eight months.

"I'm thinking about leaving," David said.

The words hung there. The goldfish continued its orbit. The papaya continued its slow fermentative death. Outside, something—a car, a siren, a distant train—screamed.

"Okay," Mara said.

"That's it? 'Okay'?"

"What do you want me to say? Should I beg? Should I cry? We played that scene already. In October. Remember?"

David did remember. The spinach had been fresh then, from the farmers' market they still pretended to enjoy visiting together. They'd made a salad he hadn't eaten and she'd pushed around her plate until the greens had wilted into something that looked, she'd said, like "the wrong kind of hope."

He crossed to the counter, picked up the papaya. It gave slightly under his thumb. "I could cut this up. We could eat it before it goes completely."

"It's already gone, David. Can't you tell?"

The goldfish broke the surface, gasping. A bubble. A tiny, perfect sphere of air that popped without a sound.

"Right," David said. "Right."

He set the papaya down. The bruised yellow skin dimpled under the weight of his hand, then sprang back, as if the fruit itself had already begun the process of forgetting his touch.