The Art of Leaving

The orange sunset bled across the office windows as I packed my cardboard box. Twelve years at this firm, reduced to what I could carry in a single trip. My coworkers had stopped pretending to work, instead watching me with that mix of envy and pity people reserve for those brave enough to jump without a parachute.

Sarah stood in the doorway, her arms crossed. 'You're really doing this? Running away again?'

'I'm not running,' I said, though the word hung between us like smoke. 'I'm choosing something else.'

'You said that about Chicago. You said that about Mark.'

Mark. The name still tasted like water from a stagnant tap—technically drinkable, but something you'd spit out if you were honest with yourself. He'd been my baseball coach in college, twenty years my senior, the first man who made me feel seen. Until I realized he only saw what he wanted to take.

A stray cat appeared on the windowsill outside, thin and matted, pressing its face against the glass as if begging for warmth. I'd been feeding it for weeks, leaving water in a paper cup on the fire escape. Some part of me had bonded with this scrappy creature, surviving on the edges of a world that had no place for it.

'That cat's going to starve without you,' Sarah said.

'It survived before me. It'll survive after.' I lifted the box. 'Animals are resilient that way.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Write that novel I've been talking about since grad school.' It sounded absurd saying it aloud, like confessing to a belief in ghosts. 'Or maybe just exist without performing for a while.'

Sarah stepped aside, and as I walked past, she touched my arm. 'For what it's worth, I always admired your exits. Even when you were wrong about why you were leaving.'

The elevator ride took forever. When the doors opened on the ground floor, the security guard nodded, already accustomed to my departure after three weeks of notice. Outside, the evening air hit me—cool and uncertain, carrying the smells of exhaust and possibility.

The cat was nowhere to be seen. I left the water cup on the windowsill anyway, a small mercy for a creature that might or might not return. Then I turned toward the subway, toward whatever came next, not running from anything anymore, but finally, irrevocably, running toward.