What We Keep

You find the long black hair wrapped around your toothbrush—hers, unmistakably hers—and it stops you cold. Three months after Sarah moved out, the apartment still holds these ghostly remnants. A bobby pin under the sofa cushion. The faint smell of her vanilla shampoo on pillowcases you've washed twice a week.

The cat, Barnaby, winds between your legs, meowing for dinner. He was hers originally, a rescue from that shelter downtown where you both spent rainy Saturday mornings. You'd fought over custody of him in the kitchen at 2 AM, voices low and sharp, until she'd sighed and said, 'Fine, you keep him. I'm moving to a studio anyway.'

You'd won Barnaby but lost everything else.

The dog next door barks—a rhythmic, lonely sound that echoes through thin walls. Your neighbor, Marcus, left two weeks ago for a job in Seattle. You wonder if his ex-partner hears the barking too, if the dog misses its person, if loss travels through walls like sound.

You pull the hair from your toothbrush. It clings to your finger, dark and silken. Sarah always complained about finding your light hair everywhere—on her coats, in her car, tangled in her jewelry. 'You shed like a golden retriever,' she'd say, laughing, before pulling you close.

Now the bathroom is too quiet. No competing for mirror time. No singing off-key while she blow-dried her hair—thick, wild, taking forever to dry. You'd stand in the doorway watching, sometimes just to be near her, sometimes to steal her makeup remover.

Barnaby jumps onto the counter and butts his head against your hand. His purr vibrates through your wrist. The cat has become your only witness, your only constant in this hollowed-out life.

You drop the hair into the trash. Somewhere in the city, Sarah is probably finding your things too. A lighter left in a jacket pocket. A sock that never matched. The fingerprints you left on every surface she touches.

The neighbor's dog barks again, urgent and insistent. You pour Barnaby's food, the kibble clinking against ceramic. The cat eats gratefully, and you stand there in your kitchen, surrounded by the quiet evidence that someone once lived here with you, and that you're the only one left to remember it all.