The Morning After Everything

I wake to sunlight filtering through the blinds, casting long shadows across the empty side of the bed. The alarm clock reads 6:47, but I've been awake since the first gray light of dawn. Seven days since Maya walked out with nothing but a suitcase and that goddamn calm expression, as if ending eight years together was as casual as returning a library book.

In the kitchen, I unscrew the cap from the vitamin D supplement—the one she insisted I start taking last winter when I complained about the seasonal gloom. "Your bones will thank you," she'd said, pressing the bottle into my palm with that infuriating tenderness. Now I swallow the pill dry, and I can't decide if the tightness in my throat is the pill or the memory.

On the counter sits the papaya I bought yesterday on autopilot at the grocery store. She loved papaya—said it tasted like sunshine and vacation, like all the places we promised we'd go. The skin mottles with yellow-orange spots, ripening on the counter without her. I cut into it, the knife sinking through flesh that's somehow too soft, too yielding. The scent floods the kitchen, sweet and cloying.

Outside, the sky darkens. Storms here come quickly, gathering on the horizon with a menace that makes the air feel heavy. When the first bolt of lightning fractures the sky—brilliant, violent, illuminating everything for a split second—I see it: the orange ceramic mug she left behind, still stained with her lipstick. It sits on the windowsill, a small act of defiance.

I watch through the glass as rain begins to fall, palm fronds in the courtyard thrashing in the sudden wind. The world feels both smaller and larger without her. I take a bite of the papaya, letting the sweetness coat my tongue, and I don't know if I'm eating because I'm hungry or because I need to taste something that reminds me of her.

Maybe that's the cruelty of it—the way love leaves traces in everything, even the fruit you forgot you hated.