Salt Water and Sweet Flesh

The papaya sat on the counter, its skin mottled with yellow like something found, not bought. Eva had brought it back from the market, pressing it into his hands with that particular softness she reserved for things that couldn't speak back.

"It's perfectly ripe," she'd said, though the way she said perfectly made it sound like an accusation.

Now he stood in the kitchen of the apartment they'd spent three years filling with objects that meant something only to them. Her hair was everywhere — in the drain, on the brush, woven into the fibers of the sweater she'd left behind. He'd found a long strand wrapped around his belt loop yesterday, had almost kept it there, a tiny filament of connection in a world suddenly gone spacious and quiet.

The knife slid through the fruit's flesh like through nothing at all. Inside, black seeds clustered in their sweet cavity. He remembered watching her eat papaya once, on that trip to Hawaii where they'd swum every morning in water so clear it felt like sinning. She'd laughed when juice ran down her chin, had wiped it away with the back of her hand, and he'd thought: this, this is what being alive feels like.

That was three months ago. Now she was in Seattle, or Portland. Somewhere with rain and people he didn't know.

He took a bite of the papaya. Too ripe. Fermenting slightly at the edges.

The afternoon light stretched across the floorboards. In the bedroom, the bedside table still held the book she'd been reading, spine uncracked. He found himself swimming through the apartment, diving through rooms that held fewer of her things each time he returned to them. Yet she was here, in the ghost-traces: the coffee mug she'd chipped, the way the shower pressure was still set to her preference, the papaya she'd bought the day before she left.

He swallowed. The sweetness clotted in his throat.

Later, he would wash the plate. He would sweep her hair from the corners. He would email her about the lease, about who gets the blender, about the box of books she keeps saying she'll collect.

But not yet. Not while the papaya still sat there, half-eaten, something she'd touched still in his hands.