Stranded at Third Base

The cat left with Sarah, taking half the furniture and all the warmth from this apartment. Now it's just me and the cable bill, watching baseball alone in a room that echoes with silence. I started running two weeks after she moved out—first just laps around the block, then longer routes through neighborhoods where other couples walked dogs and lived lives that still made sense.

Tonight's game went into extra innings. The cable flickered during the seventh-inning stretch, a static hiccup that made me think of our marriage—suddenly interrupted, then resuming like nothing had happened, though everything had changed. I used to love baseball for its rhythm. Now it's just something to fill the hours between work and sleep.

The running helps. My phone says I've logged 137 miles this month. My knees ache, my shins splinter, but the motion drowns out the quiet. Sarah always said I was running from something. She was right—I just never figured out what until she was gone.

A stray cat appeared on my fire escape last night, gray with white socks, watching me through the window while I watched the Mets lose again. For a moment, I thought about opening the window. But Sarah's cat used to sleep on that sill, and opening it felt like inviting something to replace something else that couldn't be replaced.

The cable company sent a collections notice yesterday. I should pay it. Instead, I stared at it for twenty minutes, thinking about how Sarah used to knit while watching games, her needles clicking like a clock counting down something she'd already decided to end.

Tomorrow I'll run until my legs give out. Tomorrow I'll pay the bill. Tomorrow the Mets might win. But tonight, in the bottom of the thirteenth, with runners on first and third and two outs, I turn off the TV and sit in the dark, and for the first time in months, I don't run away from the silence at all.