What the Palm Lines Forgot

The cat hasn't moved from his spot on the windowsill in three days. Neither have I, really. Since the funeral, since the lawyers, since the hollow echo of "I need space" still ricochets through the empty rooms we once filled with laughter and arguments and that particular kind of hope you mistake for inevitability.

I swallow a vitamin without water — B12, the one she always said would help with the fatigue that turned out to be something much more permanent than tiredness. The bottle sits on the counter beside her collection of succulents, the ones with leaves like swollen palms that I've somehow managed not to kill yet. Another small failure in a marriage that died by inches, by untreated symptoms, by the slow erosion of intimacy into separate beds and separate lives.

The bear rug in the living room was her pride and joy — a vintage find with one glass eye missing, something we'd joked made him look wiser than the intact version. Now I avoid stepping on him, though sometimes at 3 AM I find myself curled on his fur, tracing the patterns of his artificial coat, wondering if taxidermy isn't just love in its most desperate form.

A dog barks next door, one of those sharp insistent sounds that demands acknowledgment. I used to find it annoying. Now it's the only thing that reminds me I'm not entirely alone in the world. The neighbor walks past my window, a silhouette against the streetlamp, and I wonder if she's also lying awake at 3 AM, measuring the distance between who she was and who she's become.

The palm reader at that carnival in Santa Monica had taken my hand, traced the lifeline with surprising tenderness, and told me I'd live a long life surrounded by love. She hadn't specified that most of it would be the kind I gave to others, not received. She hadn't mentioned the vitamin bottle. She hadn't warned me that the bearskin rug would become the most honest relationship I had left.

The cat jumps down, stretches, and butts his head against my leg. He's not particularly affectionate — he's hers, really, tolerating me only because I open the cans. But in this moment, his solid warmth against my shin is enough. I swallow another vitamin without thinking, turn away from the window, and decide that tomorrow — tomorrow I might finally get out of bed.

Outside, the dog barks again, and for the first time in weeks, I don't mind the noise.