What We Feed Ourselves

Margaret stood in her kitchen at 11 PM, chopping spinach for tomorrow's smoothies. The knife rhythmic against the cutting board — thud, thud, thud — a metronome counting down the hours until she'd have to do it all again. At forty-two, she'd become an expert at provisioning for a life she didn't particularly want.

She caught her reflection in the darkened window. Gray hairs had been staging a coup at her temples for six months now, each one a tiny flag of surrender. She'd considered pulling them, but what was the point? The whole enterprise was fraying at the edges anyway.

"You're like a zombie," David had told her three nights ago, in that tone of gentle concern that felt worse than outright cruelty. "Just going through the motions. I miss the woman who used to—" He'd stopped himself, but she'd heard it anyway: the woman who used to make him feel alive.

The spinach was mostly thawed now, weeping chlorophyll onto the counter. She remembered her mother saying, "Eat your greens, they'll make you strong," as if resilience were a nutrient you could accumulate.

Today, her boss — a man who called himself "a bull" in meetings, as if aggression were a leadership style — had informed the team that another restructuring was coming. "We're all gonna be fine," he'd said, his eyes dead with practiced optimism. "But we need to be leaner." Margaret had nodded along, her stomach already preparing for the familiar ache of uncertainty.

She dumped the spinach into the blender. The machine roared, drowning out the silence of the house.

David was asleep upstairs, or pretending to be. They'd stopped asking each other what was wrong months ago because the answers were always the same: nothing, and everything.

Margaret pressed the pulse button again. The spinach slurry spun violently, a green tornado contained in glass. She thought about how she'd spent two decades feeding herself things that were supposed to sustain her — spinach, stability, David's steady love, a career with a decent 401k — and how she'd never been more certain that something essential was missing.

She poured the mixture into a mason jar, sealed it tight. Tomorrow she'd drink it standing up in her kitchen, waiting for coffee, waiting for the subway, waiting for something to change while everything stayed the same.

Upstairs, the floorboards creaked. David, coming to find her. Or maybe she was imagining it.

Margert rinsed the blender in the dark, watching the green water swirl down the drain. She knew, with a sudden and terrible clarity, that the zombie was the one who stayed.