What We Carry

The spinach had been wedged between my molars for three hours. Another dinner party with David's colleagues, another performance of the engaged wife, and now I stood in the bathroom picking at raw green fibers while laughter drifted up from the kitchen.

I caught my reflection in the mirror—dark circles, flat eyes. A zombie in designer heels. That's what David called me last month, during one of our midnight fights. "You're not even here anymore. You're just going through the motions like the walking dead." He wasn't wrong.

Downstairs, the conversation had turned to the upcoming merger. The corporate pyramid shuffling its deck chairs again. These people spent their lives climbing toward a summit that kept receding, while I stood at the bottom holding the umbrella.

A movement outside caught my eye. A fox slipped across the patio, flame-bright against the darkness, carrying something in its jaws. It moved with such purpose, such clarity. I watched until it disappeared into the woods, envying its single-minded drive.

I'd met David at a grief support group five years ago. Both of us carrying the weight of dead mothers, we'd gravitated together like damaged magnets. For a while, our shared bear of a burden had made us lighter. Two broken things making a whole.

But last year he'd been promoted, and the man who once held me while I sobbed on bathroom floors had started disappearing into spreadsheets and strategy meetings. Tonight he'd introduced me as "the supportive wife" to a junior associate who looked at me like I was a decorative lamp.

The fox reappeared, without its prey now, trotting back the way it came. Hunt successful, life continuing. Business as usual.

I spit the last of the spinach into the sink, rinsed my mouth, and applied fresh lipstick. My reflection looked almost alive.

Downstairs, David caught my eye from across the room and raised his glass— signaling me to join some story he was telling. I thought about the fox. I thought about the long drive home ahead, and the thousand mornings after that. I thought about how easy it would be to keep being this particular kind of dead.

Then I walked into the room, and for the first time in months, I didn't follow his cue. I walked right past him, out the sliding door, into the cold night air where the world was vast and possible and terrifyingly alive.