Running on Empty

The treadmill's rhythmic hum became a meditation, or perhaps punishment. Elena had been running every morning since Marcus left three months ago, chasing an endorphin rush that never quite arrived. Her legs pumped automatically, her brain circling the same worn tracks: the unsigned divorce papers, the empty half of the closet, the way their cat—now hers alone—still waited by the door every evening.

Afterwards, she stood in her kitchen, contemplating a wilted bag of spinach like it held the answers to her middle-aged unraveling. This was what thirty-nine looked like: desk salads that tasted like regret, a corporate job that demanded she present as human while feeling increasingly like a zombie, performing enthusiasm for mergers that meant nothing.

Her phone buzzed. A notification from Marcus, rare enough to make her hands tremble: "I found your papaya sourdough recipe. Want me to mail it?"

The papaya bread. They'd made it together in Hawaii, during that last desperate attempt to save their marriage—tropical fruit and cane sugar stirred into something sweet that couldn't mask the bitterness between them. She remembered how he'd laughed, juice running down his chin, how they'd pretended everything could be fixed with enough sunshine.

Elena deleted the message. She opened the fridge and stared at the spinach again, then at the cat winding around her ankles, demanding breakfast. Some hungers couldn't be satisfied with food. Some losses didn't have recipes.

She closed the fridge door gently, as if not to wake the ghosts. Then she did what she did every morning: she fed the cat, showered, and prepared to spend another day running in place, pretending that somewhere ahead, something was still worth chasing.