The Papaya on the Counter

The papaya sat on the counter for three days before Tom finally noticed it. That was how things had become between us—fruit rotting in silence, words unsaid, a whole marriage fermenting in the ambient warmth of our shared indifference.

I watched him from the doorway as he sliced into the orange skin, knife dull against the flesh. He looked like a zombie, frankly—eyes glazed, movements mechanical, the hollowed-out shell of a man who'd once kissed me so thoroughly I forgot my own name. Now he couldn't remember to take his vitamin D supplements, couldn't remember we'd promised to try for a baby this year, couldn't remember the version of himself that gave a damn.

"You bought this?" he asked, gesturing with the knife.

"Last Tuesday."

"Huh."

That was it. Huh. The sum total of his curiosity about my life, my thoughts, the fruit I'd selected because he'd once mentioned liking it fresh from the market. That man was gone. In his place was this creature who shuffled through his work-from-home days in sweatpants, answering emails with increasing curt efficiency, living on granola bars and whatever I put in front of him.

Our cat, Luna, wound between my legs, purring. She still loved him. She still curled on his chest during his endless Zoom meetings, still bumped her head against his hand when he sat on the couch staring at nothing. Sometimes I envied her simplicity. Other times I wanted to shake her—don't you see? He's not actually here anymore.

"I'm thinking about leaving," I said.

Tom looked up. For a second, something flickered behind his eyes—alarm, maybe. Or just the automatic reflex of someone hearing words that sounded like they should matter.

"Okay," he said, and went back to slicing the papaya.

That was the moment I knew. Not the absence of fight, not the indifference itself—but the way he kept cutting, precise and careful, as if the fruit still mattered when nothing else did. As if ritual could substitute for connection, as if vitamins and fresh fruit and the appearance of a life could keep a body walking around when its soul had already packed its bags.

I walked out the door with nothing but my keys and the realization that some zombies don't want to be saved. They just want someone to keep bringing them fruit.