Things Left Behind

The papaya sat on the counter like a forgotten promise, its skin freckled with brown spots where time had caught up with it. Elena had bought it the day she left—something about wanting him to eat more fruit, as if proper nutrition could compensate for a crumbling marriage.

Marcus stood in the kitchen of his apartment, now so quiet he could hear the refrigerator cycling on and off. The cable box blinked an orange error light at him, a tiny eye accusing him of failing to pay the bill on time. Not that it mattered. He'd been watching nothing but baseball highlights anyway, the sound turned down low so the silence wouldn't feel so thick.

He opened the fridge and stared at the spinach bag in the vegetable drawer. It was starting to wilt, the leaves turning slimy where they touched each other. Just like them, he thought—kept too close in the same container, slowly suffocating. They'd tried couple's counseling. They'd tried date nights. They'd tried pretending everything was fine until the pretending became exhausting.

"You're always somewhere else," she'd said, her voice cracking. "Even when you're right here."

He'd wanted to argue, to explain that the baseball games were his escape from the pressure of expectations, from the feeling that he was constantly disappointing her. But he'd just stayed silent, and that silence had eventually become permanent.

Marcus cut into the papaya. It was overripe, sweet bordering on fermented, but he ate it anyway, standing over the sink. The juice dripped down his chin. For a moment he almost cried, but then he didn't. He washed the dish and placed it in the drying rack, perfectly aligned with the others.

The orange light on the cable box kept blinking. He didn't fix it. Some broken things, he was learning, were better left acknowledged.