What She Carries

Margaret stands in the produce aisle, the fluorescent hum of the grocery store amplifying the headache that's been nesting behind her eyes for three days. In her cart: papaya, still green because Richard prefers them that way. He always said ripe ones tasted too much like decay, too much like the things they refused to speak of.

She reaches for an orange, its skin dimpled like the back of her grandmother's hands. Richard had left that morning—said something about needing to bear the weight of his own choices, whatever that meant. His mother had called him a fox once, sly and impossible to pin down. Margaret had laughed, thinking it was affection.

Now she understands. The狐狸—the fox—that had slipped into their bed two years ago, in the form of his assistant. Papaya and orange in her cart. The colors of impending decay.

The cashier, a girl with tired eyes, asks if she found everything okay. Margaret wants to tell her about the papaya ripening on the counter, how its sweet rot will fill the kitchen where Richard won't be eating. How she's stopped being the bear who carries everyone else's winter grief, how she's learning to be something harder, sharper.

Instead she says, "Yes. Thank you."

In the parking lot, a fox slinks between cars—actual this time, its red coat stark against the pavement. Their eyes meet, liquid amber to hers, before it vanishes behind the dumpster. Margaret feels something loosen in her chest, a spring unwinding after twenty years.

The papaya sits on the passenger seat. She'll let it ripen. She'll eat it alone, spooning out the sweet black seeds, learning the taste of things allowed to finish on their own terms.