The Lightning in Her Palm

Elena moved through her days like a **zombie**, the three-month mark of Marcus's death arriving not with fanfare but with the dull thud of ordinary Tuesday things. Her therapist suggested she start taking **vitamin** D supplements — something about seasonal depression compounding grief — but the bottle sat unopened on her counter, amber pills mocking her from inside the plastic prison.

That evening, she found herself at the grocery store at 8 PM, standing before a wall of greens. Marcus had always made the best creamed **spinach**, his mother's recipe, something he'd only cook on special occasions. Elena hadn't made it since the funeral. Her hand trembled as she reached for a bag, and she remembered the way his **palm** had felt against hers — warm, calloused from his work as an electrician, perpetually stained with grease and reassurance. She'd trace the lifeline across his hand some nights, making up fortunes as they lay tangled in sheets, both pretending they had forever figured out.

The cart spun as she turned toward checkout, metal wheels screeching against linoleum. Outside, the sky cracked open — **lightning** fracturing the darkness like an eggshell, sudden and violent. Rain sheeted down as she sprinted to her car, spinach clutched to her chest like something holy.

She drove home through the storm, windshield wipers fighting a losing battle, and somewhere between the grocery store and her driveway, something inside her broke open too. Not cleanly — not like lightning — but messy and necessary. She sat in her parked car, rain drumming against the roof, and finally let herself cry for the man who had taught her that even storms eventually pass. The spinach sat on the passenger seat, leaves already wilting in the humidity. Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow she would take the vitamin. Tomorrow she would make the spinach. But tonight, she would just let herself feel it all — the lightning, the loss, the love that refused to die with him.