What We Carry Inside

The bear lumbered across the mountain trail, thirty yards ahead, oblivious to Elena's presence. She'd been running this route every morning since David left, a desperate attempt to outpace the panic attacks that now visited her weekly. Her vitamin regimen—D3 for mood, B-complex for energy, magnesium for sleep—sat in a pill organizer on her kitchen counter, a pathetic attempt to buy her way back to the person she used to be.

The bear paused. Elena held her breath, her heart hammering against ribs that felt too fragile. She'd read about bear encounters in park literature: don't run, make yourself large, back away slowly. But running was all she knew anymore. Running from the empty side of the bed. Running from the gray streaks invading her hair like unwanted guests. Running from the realization that at thirty-seven, she'd become the kind of person who ate spinach salads not because she enjoyed them, but because they promised something—longevity, renewal, redemption.

The bear sniffed the air, then continued on its way, disappearing into the dense Montana pines. Elena collapsed against a lodgepole pine, sliding down until she hit the ground. Her legs trembled. She'd outrun nothing—neither the bear nor the hollow feeling that had taken up permanent residence in her chest.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. David.

She stared at his name, something tight and awful unfolding in her throat. The hair he'd once described as "sunlight caught in amber" now hung lank and unwashed. She'd forgotten to condition it yesterday. Or brush it.

Elena pressed the phone to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut until bursts of light fractured across the darkness. Behind her eyelids, she saw it all: their last fight, the spinach wilting in the colander, the vitamins scattered across the kitchen floor when she'd swept everything off the counter in a rage she hadn't known she was capable of.

The bear was gone. She was still here.

She stood up slowly, knees creaking, and began the long run back down the mountain.