What Remains in the Cart

The grocery store fluorescent lights hum above me, a sterile symphony to match the hollow space in my chest. I stand paralyzed in the produce aisle, staring at a bag of spinach like it holds the answers to questions I'm afraid to ask.

It's been three weeks since Maya left. Three weeks of learning how to exist in an apartment that suddenly feels too large, too quiet, too ours. The spinach was always her thing—she'd put it in everything. Smoothies, salads, eggs. 'It's about longevity,' she'd say, pressing a kiss to my forehead that left me believing in forever.

Now I'm thirty-five and learning that forever is just a story we tell ourselves to sleep at night.

A woman with striking silver hair catches my eye in the next aisle. She moves with deliberate purpose, her cart filled with wine and frozen dinners, and I wonder what her story is. What losses she carries in the lines around her eyes. My fingers find their way to my own hair, now streaked with gray I didn't have two years ago—stress, or maybe just time catching up with me.

I grab the spinach. I don't even like it that much.

Back home, I lace up my running shoes for the third time this week. Running used to be about fitness, about training for marathons with Maya cheering at mile markers. Now it's about exhaustion—physical, bone-deep exhaustion that might finally let me sleep through the night without reaching for the cold side of the bed.

The pavement unfurls beneath me, each step a rhythm that drowns out the memories. But tonight, as my lungs burn and the sun begins to set, I find myself running toward something instead of away.

The new Italian place on 5th Street.

I walk in, spinach-heavy groceries still on the passenger seat, and order the spinach ravioli. When the waiter asks if I'm waiting for someone, I smile—a genuine, small thing that feels like the first real emotion I've felt in weeks.

'No,' I say. 'Just me. Learning to be okay with just me.'

The ravioli is perfect. And somewhere, in the quiet dignity of eating alone, I think maybe I'll be alright after all.