The Vitamins of Survival

Margot stood before the bathroom mirror, pulling a gray strand of hair from her temple. Forty-three years old and suddenly every vitamin bottle on her counter seemed like a desperate plea against entropy. The B12 for energy she never had. The D3 for bones that felt increasingly brittle. The omega-3 for a brain that couldn't remember why she'd stayed.

"You're like a zombie," David had told her yesterday, during the fight that ended everything. "Just going through the motions. I can't bear it anymore."

She'd laughed then, bitter and sharp as the fox that lived in the ravine behind their house—the one she'd watched for years, sleek and wild and unbothered by domesticity. The fox knew something about survival. It didn't take vitamins.

Tonight, the house was quiet. David's boxes were gone. The vitamin bottles remained, mocking her with their promises of renewal. She thought about the fox again, how it moved through the world without apology, without needing to be anything other than what it was.

Margot swept all the bottles into the trash. The sound was satisfying—plastic hitting plastic, a small revolution in a bathroom that had witnessed too many tears, too many disappointing reflections, too many attempts to fix what wasn't broken but simply changing.

She walked to the back door and opened it. There, in the moonlight, the fox paused. Their eyes met across the yard. Neither moved. Then the fox turned, tail flashing like a signature, and vanished into the dark.

Margot took a breath. For the first time in years, it felt like enough.