The Things We Carry

The fedora wasn't mine. It belonged to David, left behind in the aftermath of our fight, and I'd been wearing it for three days straight — a ridiculous affectation, maybe, but it smelled like his shampoo and that was the only thing keeping me grounded.

I was operating on autopilot anyway, moving through the office like a **zombie** in expensive shoes. Four years of mergers and acquisitions had hollowed me out. I barely recognized the woman in the bathroom mirror, pale and compartmentalized, her eyes flat from too many spreadsheets and not enough sleep.

"You're scaring me," Elena had said over drinks Saturday night. She'd ordered sparkling **water** because she was eight weeks pregnant and I'd ordered gin because I wasn't. "You're not even there anymore. You're just... somewhere else."

She wasn't wrong. I'd been checking out for months, piece by piece, like a house being slowly emptied of furniture.

The meeting ran until 7 PM. By the time I stepped outside, rain was sheeting down, turning the city into reflections and blurred neon. I started walking toward the river without consciously deciding to. Just needing to see something that wasn't a deadline or a deliverable.

That's when I saw the **fox**.

It stood at the edge of the parking lot behind our building, vivid and improbable against the concrete and steel. A red fox, watching me with calm, assessing eyes. For a moment we simply looked at each other — this wild creature that had somehow learned to survive in the margins of the city, and the woman who'd forgotten how to survive anywhere at all.

It dipped its head once, almost like acknowledgment, then slipped into the shadows.

I stood there in the rain, David's hat dripping, and realized I didn't want to be a ghost haunting my own life anymore. The fox would make its way. It was time I learned to do the same.