The Papaya Monologues

Mara stood in the produce aisle, clutching a papaya like it was a grenade. The fluorescent lights hummed above her, the same terrible frequency they'd hummed at three in the morning when she'd finally packed her things. She was thirty-four now, and somehow she was still buying fruit she didn't even like just because it was what *he* used to eat for breakfast.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open. The storm had been threatening all day, the air thick with that particular kind of electricity that makes your skin feel too tight, like you're wearing someone else's emotions. Rain sheets battered the grocery store roof.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket — him, probably. Or maybe it was just the universe reminding her she hadn't responded to that cable bill, the one final account they'd somehow forgotten to close. She'd meant to call the company for weeks now. Some part of her kept not doing it, like leaving that one thread untied meant keeping something alive.

The papaya felt heavy in her hand. It was almost too orange, the color of a sunset you can't look directly at, the color of the dress she'd worn to his sister's wedding, the one everyone said made her look radiant. She looked radiant now, apparently — her mother had told her so last week, "You look so healthy, Mara, like you're finally eating."

She wasn't.

A man in a soaked tweed hat stood near the avocados, examining each one with surgical precision. He looked like someone's grandfather, someone who'd lived through things and come out the other side, mended but visible. Mara wanted to ask him: does it get easier? Do you stop buying fruit that reminds you of someone who chose himself over you?

Instead, she put the papaya back on the stack. It made a soft thud against its brothers.

The lightning flashed again, illuminating the store in stark white. In that moment, she saw herself reflected in the glass doors of the dairy case: coat unbuttoned, hair wet from the rain she'd run through to get here, looking wild-eyed and electric and absolutely, terrifyingly alive.

She walked out into the storm without anything in her hands, letting herself be soaked, letting herself be struck by whatever came next.