What Remains in the Refrigerator

The papaya had been ripe when you left. Now it sat softened in the crisper drawer, its skin freckled with decay, like something I should have said and didn't. Four days since you walked out with a single duffel, leaving me with the apartment we'd signed a lease on three months ago—two optimists with good credit and no idea how quickly optimism could curdle.

I unplugged the cable box first. Your shows, our shows, all those queued episodes we'd promised to watch together. The cable knotted around my ankles like something alive as I coiled it, fighting back. I remembered you saying, once, drunk on cheap wine at that party where we met, that you were done with connections. Tethered wasn't how you wanted to be. I'd laughed, kissed you, thought I could be the exception.

The cat—your cat, technically, though she slept on my chest—watched from the bookshelf as I packed. Her golden eyes tracked each taped box, judging. You'd said you couldn't take her to your mother's place. Allergies. Convenient, that word. How it comes to mean whatever you need it to mean when you're rewriting the narrative of us.

I found your hair everywhere. In the drain. Wound around the vacuum roller. A single dark strand caught in the zipper of my winter coat, which you must have worn last week when it was cold, back when you still borrowed my things without asking, back when that felt like intimacy instead of theft. I pulled it loose and held it to the light, translucent against the window, before letting it drift to the floor.

The thing about grief is it's not a single bear you can spot from a distance and choose to avoid. It's smaller. It's the way my hand still reaches for your coffee mug in the morning. It's the papaya I can't bring myself to throw away because you picked it out, running your thumb over its skin, saying this one, this one's perfect.

I stood in the empty kitchen and finally sliced it open. The flesh was bright and improbable against the gray morning. I ate it standing up, juice running down my chin, tasting like something that used to be sweet and was trying very hard not to admit it had forgotten how to be.