Papaya for Breakfast

Mara stood at the kitchen counter at 6:47 AM, her finger pressing the soft skin of a papaya. It yielded beneath her touch—too ripe, like everything lately. David used to bring them home from the market on Saturdays, saying they reminded him of the honeymoon in Costa Rica, how she'd laughed when juice ran down her chin. Now they just sat in the fruit bowl, turning to mush while he moved through the apartment like a ghost, gathering his things in cardboard boxes.

"I'm not leaving because I stopped loving you," he'd said last night, not looking at her. "I'm leaving because I don't know who I am when I'm with you anymore."

The papaya split too easily under her knife. Inside, the seeds clustered like black pearls, impossible and beautiful. She thought about the years she'd spent swimming through his depression, the way she'd learned to recognize the riptide of his moods before he could name them himself. She'd been drowning so gradually she hadn't noticed she couldn't breathe.

Her phone buzzed on the counter—Marcus from work. *Can we talk?*

Last week, drunk at the office holiday party, Marcus had pressed her against the supply closet door and whispered, "You're not the zombie everyone thinks you are." His hand had lingered on her waist. She'd stepped away, smoothed her skirt, made some joke about boundaries. But the way he'd looked at her—like she was something worth seeing—had haunted her ever since.

She'd spent her entire adult life running from anything that threatened her carefully constructed stability. David was safe. David was familiar. David was also slowly killing her, it turned out.

Outside, the first snow of December fell in silence. Mara found David's old hat on the coat rack—a gray wool beanie she'd bought him seven years ago, when he complained about the draft in their first apartment together. She pulled it on. It smelled like him: sandalwood soap and that particular brand of laundry detergent she'd been buying for a decade.

The papaya seeds spilled into the trash. She sliced the flesh into wedges, arranged them on a plate. For the first time in years, she was eating breakfast alone. For the first time in years, she wasn't waiting for someone else to wake up to validate her morning.

Her phone lit up again. Marcus. *I'm serious. Coffee?*

Mara put the papaya in her mouth. It was impossibly sweet, the kind of sweetness that makes your teeth ache. She typed back: *Yes.*

Then she took off the hat, folded it carefully, and placed it in the box with David's things.