What Remains

The spinach lay wilted in the colander, like something that had already given up. Elena watched the water run through it, green and translucent, and thought about how much of her life felt like this lately — washed out, drained of color, reduced to a routine of nutrients and sustenance without joy.

Her iPhone vibrated against the counter. Marcus again. Probably asking what time she'd be home, or whether she'd picked up wine, or some other domestic inquiry that used to feel like intimacy and now felt like inventory management.

She didn't pick up.

Three years ago, she would have. Three years ago, the sight of his name on her screen made her stomach flutter. Now, looking at his contact photo — him grinning at some beach in Mexico, before everything between them had started to feel like homework — she felt nothing at all. Or maybe she felt everything, compressed into a numbness that terrified her.

They'd become zombies together, she realized. Not the flesh-eating kind from movies, but something worse: two people moving through the motions of a life that no longer fit, animated by habit and fear of the alternative, eating the same dinners, having the same conversations about work and weekends and whether they should finally replace the coffee table, while something vital inside them rotted away unnoticed.

She finished washing the spinach and dropped it into a bowl. The phone lit up again. A text this time: "Picked up your favorite wine. See you soon."

He remembered her favorite wine. He remembered to buy spinach because she'd mentioned wanting to cook healthier meals. These were love actions, technically. They were the building blocks of a partnership.

Elena picked up her iPhone and typed back: "Can't wait."

The words felt like ash in her mouth.

She placed the phone on the counter and stared at the spinach, thinking about how some things could look perfectly fine on the outside while being completely hollow within. How you could keep consuming something, keep going through the motions, long after you'd stopped being nourished by it.

The phone screen dimmed, reflecting her own face back at her — tired, thirty-five, and increasingly unsure of the difference between staying and surviving.