Supplemental Regrets

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter next to a wilting bag of spinach. Arthur stared at both, considering which had more life left. The spinach was three days past its prime, limp and smelling faintly of something dying. The papers were crisp, notarized, efficient.

He took his vitamin D supplement with a gulp of lukewarm coffee. The doctor had prescribed them last month, along with a recommendation to reduce stress. "You're carrying too much tension," she'd said, pressing fingers into his shoulders. Arthur had wanted to tell her that tension was the only thing holding him together.

In the backyard, his brother was pitching baseballs to Arthur's nephew. The crack of the bat echoed through the sliding glass door—a sound that used to mean summer weekends and cold beer, now just another reminder of everything he'd failed to preserve. His marriage hadn't been a perfect game, but it hadn't been a forfeit either. Just slow erosion, inning by inning.

"You're as stubborn as a bull about everything," Maya had said during their last conversation, not a fight but that terrible calm that comes after the fighting stops. "You'd rather charge through walls than walk around them."

She wasn't wrong. Arthur had seen himself in the mirror that morning—jaw set, eyes fixed on some imaginary horizon. His father had been the same way. They'd put the old bull down when Arthur was twelve, and he'd watched the animal sink to its knees, confused and trusting until the end.

The spinach needed to be thrown out. Maya would have done it yesterday. Arthur left it there, watching it rot, some small act of rebellion against the inevitable order of things.

He swallowed another vitamin. The bottle promised better health, stronger bones, a version of himself that might still be worth keeping. Some lies were worth believing.

Outside, his nephew hit a home run. The family cheered. Arthur stood alone in his kitchen, surrounded by the debris of a life he'd carefully constructed and then systematically dismantled, and understood suddenly that sometimes the most violent thing you can do is stay absolutely still.