What We Carry

The grocery list sat on the counter, Eleanor's handwriting familiar even after three months. Fresh spinach, it said. She'd written it the morning before she left, back when they still made lists together, back when she assumed they'd be eating dinner at the table that evening.

Now Michael stood in the kitchen at 11 PM, the house quiet except for the refrigerator's hum. He'd been running late from work again—not that anyone was waiting. The spinach in the crisper drawer had wilted into something unrecognizable, a green slime that made his stomach turn. Everything in this house was decaying without her maintenance.

He filled a glass with water from the tap, watching it swirl in the pitcher. She'd always insisted on filtered water. He drank it anyway, the metallic taste grounding him in a reality he still couldn't quite accept.

Her hat hung on the hook by the door—that ridiculous wide-brimmed thing she'd worn to the community garden. He'd mocked it gently when she bought it, calling it her garden witch aesthetic. She'd laughed, tilting it at him. You'll miss this when I'm gone, she'd said. Not like that. Not like this.

The garden. That's where she'd been going those Sunday mornings, the ones he'd slept through because Saturday nights had become so deliberately long. The spinach was just one item on a list that had kept her occupied, given her purpose outside their shared stagnation.

He threw the spinach away, the bag tearing, green slime on his fingers. The faucet ran as he washed his hands, water carrying pieces of her down the drain in slow motion. This was what they'd become: accumulation and erosion, the mundane work of ending things without anyone actually saying the words.

Tomorrow he'd call his mother. Tomorrow he'd cancel the garden membership. Tomorrow he'd take down the hat. But the water had already been running for too long, and he couldn't seem to turn it off, couldn't stop watching everything disappear.