What Lightning Takes

The storm broke just as Elena packed the last box. Lightning fractured the sky outside the window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the sudden brightness of their—no, her—apartment. She'd asked him to take his things. He'd taken almost nothing, as if leaving behind evidence would somehow preserve what they'd had.

His hat still hung on the hook by the door, a worn fedora he'd worn to their first dinner. She remembered the way he'd tilted it when he made jokes, the way he looked under its brim when he said he loved her. Now it was just felt and ribbon, meaningless without the head that shaped it.

The kitchen counter held the evidence of their last breakfast together—half a papaya, blackening where the metal spoon had rested. He'd brought it home from the market, saying it reminded him of their trip to Maui, of how she'd laughed when juice dripped down her chin at the roadside stand. That was three years ago. Now the fruit sat decaying, sweet and rotting, like the things they'd stopped saying to each other.

From the neighbor's balcony, a dog began to howl at the thunder. It was the same rhythm as his breathing when he couldn't sleep, the same restless sound he made when he worried about money, about time, about becoming his father. She'd found comfort in it once. Now it was just noise.

Another flash of lightning, closer this time. The lights flickered and died. Elena sat in the sudden dark, surrounded by boxes she couldn't bring herself to seal, by objects that were supposed to be things but had become something else entirely. The hat, the fruit, the dog's persistent howling—all of it heavy with the weight of what she couldn't let herself remember.

She could call him. Could ask him to come get his hat, could say the papaya had gone bad, could pretend the storm had scared her. Instead she sat on the floor between the boxes and let the lightning illuminate, again and again, all the empty spaces where something used to be.