Supplications to an Empty Room

The apartment felt cavernous without Maya's things. Thomas sat at the kitchen table, staring at the wilted spinach in his salad bowl like it might offer some explanation for where everything went wrong. Six months of marriage, dissolved into a voicemail message and a half-empty closet.

His older sister's cat, a morbidly obese tabby named Bear, jumped onto the table and stepped directly into the spinach. Bear had been staying with them since Diane's divorce — another marriage statistic to add to the family collection.

"You're not helping," Thomas said, pushing the cat away. Bear glared at him with the judgment only an animal can possess.

Maya had left a bottle of men's multivitamins on the counter — purchased during that brief period when she'd tried to "optimize" him, along with the gym membership he never used and the self-help books he never read. He dry-swallowed one, ignoring the chalky taste, wondering if there was a vitamin for deficiency of character.

The radio droned on — a baseball game, the announcer's voice rising with each pitch. Thomas had played in college, briefly, before the injury and the realization that he wasn't good enough. That was the story of his life, wasn't it? Almost good enough. Almost worthy. Almost happy.

His phone buzzed. Maya. Probably returning for something she forgot. He let it ring.

Bear meowed, indignant, and knocked the spinach onto the floor. Thomas watched it fall, thinking about all the things he should say, all the apologies he should make, all the ways he should fight for her. Instead, he cleaned up the mess, methodically, as if completing the task correctly might somehow redeem everything else he'd gotten wrong.

"Supplications to an empty room," his mother used to say about his father's prayers. Thomas understood now. Some conversations, you have alone.