What We Keep

The divorce mediator had asked us to divide everything evenly, but some things refuse to be split. Like the cat, who sat on the windowsill watching us with that predatory patience she'd inherited from neither of us, or the way my hands still reached for you in sleep.

I stood in the kitchen of our apartment—your apartment now—packing boxes while baseball playoffs murmured from the television. You were always the one who understood the sport's slow, deliberate violence. I'd only watched because the curve of your jaw relaxed when you did, because your hair fell across your forehead in that particular way that made me want to trace it back from your eyes.

"You can take the good dishes," you said, not turning from the sink. "I never liked them anyway."

"You bought them."

"I bought them for you."

The water kept running. You washed the same plate over and over while the apartment grew smaller around us, filled with seven years of accumulated objects that suddenly seemed impossible to categorize. His or hers. Necessary or discard.

The cat—your idea, a compromise when I wanted a dog—hopped onto the counter. She was old now, her movements stiff with arthritis. She'd outlasted whatever we'd meant to each other.

"She stays with me," I said. "The apartment allows pets."

You nodded without turning around. Your shoulders were so thin beneath your t-shirt. When had you become someone I didn't know how to touch?

I carried the last box to my car. The baseball game ended—some team won, some team lost—and the commentator's voice faded into the apartment's heavy silence. Standing at the door, I watched you for a moment: hands braced on the sink, water still running, crying in a way that made no sound, your shoulders shaking like something fragile trying to hold itself together.

I wanted to say something about how we'd meet again, how people do. But some divisions are final. I closed the door gently, as if you might still be sleeping on the other side, and walked out into the rain carrying nothing that mattered.