The Last Papaya

Elena sat on the balcony of the Seattle apartment that no longer felt like home, rain streaming down the windows like the tears she refused to cry. The sound of water against glass had become her new lullaby, a constant reminder that the world kept moving even after Marcus died.

She sliced into the papaya on the table, its vibrant orange flesh startling against the gray morning. They'd planned to buy papayas together in Costa Rica this winter—the trip she'd now take alone. The knife slipped, juice running over her fingers like a second kind of tears, sticky and sweet and unfair.

Her iPhone buzzed on the counter. Another condolence message from someone who'd meant something once, now just another name in the long list of people who didn't know what to say. She'd stopped replying three days ago. What was there to say except that her whole future had dissolved in a single phone call, that she was expected to somehow bear the weight of a life she'd never wanted alone?

"You can't just stay here," her sister had said yesterday. "You're thirty-five, El. You need to—"

What? Live? As if living were something you could simply choose to do, like ordering takeout or buying new shoes.

A crash from below interrupted her thoughts. She leaned over the railing—their neighbor's dog had knocked over a planter. The old woman who lived in 2B was kneeling in the wet dirt, gathering broken pottery with hands that trembled. Elena watched her salvage what she could, placing each shard into a plastic container with such careful tenderness that Elena's chest ached.

The papaya sat half-eaten on her plate. She took another bite anyway, let it sit on her tongue. Marcus would have made some joke about how it tasted like sweaty feet and sunshine. God, she missed his terrible jokes. Missed how he'd made her laugh even when she wanted to scream.

Her iPhone lit up again. A reminder: "Flight to San José leaves in 6 hours."

Elena stood up, crossed to the railing, and watched the water run down to the street below. She'd go on the trip. She'd eat papayas in Costa Rica and hate every bite. She'd learn to bear this unbearable future one breath at a time. And somewhere along the way, maybe she'd figure out how to want to.

The rain kept falling. She finished the papaya.