Things We Leave Behind

The fedora sat on the closet shelf like a dark omen, collecting dust since your 'jazz phase' three years ago. I should have tossed it when you left, but some things are harder to discard than a marriage.

Your ethernet cable still snakes behind the bookshelf, a black umbilical cord you never bothered to coil. I'd trip over it at 3 AM, heading to the kitchen for water I couldn't drink after you'd fallen asleep on my shoulder, your breath hot against my neck. Now it's just another thing I've learned to step around.

The palm tree in the corner died two weeks after you moved out. I kept watering it anyway, watching the fronds turn brown and brittle, like I was punishing myself for something. Maybe I was. The cat—your cat, technically, though she always slept on my side of the bed—used to hide beneath its drooping leaves during our arguments. She still looks at me like she's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

'You never forgave me for that trip to Miami,' you said, standing in the doorway with your boxes packed. 'For what?' I asked, though I knew. The way you'd disappeared for three days, emerged sunburned and distant, wearing that ridiculous fedora like you'd become someone else entirely.

I found a receipt in your coat pocket later. A pawn shop. You'd sold your grandmother's ring—the one you swore you'd never part with—to pay for the hotel room where you'd stayed alone. You weren't with another woman. You were just tired of being my husband.

The cable's disconnected now. The palm tree's in the trash. I wear your fedora sometimes when I'm writing, just to feel something ridiculous on my head, something that isn't grief. The cat watches me, yellow eyes unimpressed, and I wonder what she knows that I still haven't figured out.

Some things we leave behind. Others just stay, gathering dust, waiting for us to decide whether to keep them or finally let them go.