Tropical Absence

The papaya sat on the white nightstand, uneaten since yesterday. By now it would be soft, the skin yielding to the slightest pressure, the orange flesh inside grown sweet and cloying—much like the last three months of our marriage.

I stepped onto the balcony anyway. The pool below glittered with artificial blue, circled by lounge chairs occupied by people pretending to be happy. A couple in the corner clinked glasses, their laughter carrying up to me like small sharp things.

You would have hated this place. You would have made some cutting remark about performative leisure, about the way guests lined their drinks with little paper umbrellas as if afraid of the sun.

My phone lit up. Sheila from accounting, asking if I'd signed the divorce papers. The pool water rippled as someone dove in, breaking the surface tension.

I'd booked this trip alone because everyone said I needed time to myself. Time to process. Time to heal. Instead, I found myself tracing the patterns of a palm frond against the stucco wall, remembering how you'd once told me that palms only grow outward, never back—the way trees should, you'd said, if they wanted to survive their own history.

The papaya had rotted through when I finally touched it. My fingers broke the skin, revealing the black seeds inside. I washed them down the sink, watching each one disappear, thinking about how you used to say that tropical fruits were designed by nature to be forgotten—their sweetness a trick to ensure something would carry them forward after death.

Some part of me wishes I'd never booked this room. Another part knows I'll never leave it.