Spinach at Midnight

The first month after Marcus left, I developed rituals that felt like self-improvement but were actually just ways to exhaust myself enough to sleep. Every morning at 5 AM, I took a multivitamin the color of radioactive sunset and went running until my lungs burned, chasing the sunrise down streets that used to be ours.

Barnaby — his cat, technically, but the custody arrangement hadn't been formalized — watched from the windowsill. His yellow eyes followed my departure with what I imagine was judgment. He'd been Marcus's wedding gift to me, proof of commitment in feline form. Now he was the silent witness to my reconstruction project.

The vitamin bottle sat on the counter next to the blender I'd bought on impulse. Marcus had always teased me about my hair — how it frizzed in humidity, how I couldn't decide on a color and keep it. Now it was chopped short, dyed an aggressive auburn that felt like a middle finger to his preference for 'natural beauty.' I caught my reflection in shop windows sometimes and didn't recognize the woman staring back.

Friday nights became the hardest. That's when we used to cook together, experimenting with recipes we'd never make again. Last Friday, I stood in the grocery store at 11 PM, holding a bag of spinach that was already wilting at the edges. The clerk looked at me with tired eyes.

'Rough night?' he asked, scanning the organic greens.

'I'm starting a new diet,' I said, which wasn't exactly a lie. 'Trying to become someone who eats spinach voluntarily.'

He laughed. 'Good luck with that.'

Back home, Barnaby wound around my legs, purring loud as a freight train. I dumped the spinach into a bowl with vinaigrette I'd made from a recipe I found online — one of Marcus's old cookbooks still on the shelf, bookmarked with his handwriting. I ate it standing up, tears mixing with the sharp dressing, while Barnaby watched from the counter.

The cat jumped down and head-butted my shin.

'Yeah,' I whispered to him. 'I know you miss him too.'

But the truth was, I didn't know if I missed Marcus or the version of myself I'd been with him. The running, the vitamins, the spinach, the hair — they were all attempts to build something new on ground that still felt unstable. Barnaby purred against my leg, steady as a heartbeat, and for the first time in weeks, I didn't feel like I was fleeing something. I was just running toward whatever came next.