What We Leave Behind

The cat watched from the windowsill as I packed. Bernard hadn't even noticed I was leaving until he saw the suitcase by the door, and even then, his only concern was whether his dinner would be on time.

"You're doing what?" Marcus asked, his voice cracking on the word. He stood in the kitchen doorway, the refrigerator humming behind him.

"I've been running in circles for three years, Marc. I just realized I'm the only one actually moving."

Outside, lightning split the sky—this violent, beautiful fracture that illuminated everything I'd been trying not to see. The way he stopped asking about my job after the first year. The way my opinions had become footnotes to his sentences. The slow erosion of self that happens so gradually you don't feel it until you're hollow.

"Is this because of what I said about Sarah?" He stepped forward, and I smelled the whiskey on his breath. "I was joking."

"It's not just that. It's everything." I zipped the suitcase closed. The sound was final, like a door clicking shut.

I remembered the first time he cooked for me—wilted spinach with garlic, something so simple and tender that made me believe he saw me. Now he couldn't remember I hated cilantro. Small things, maybe. But they add up.

"You'll come back," he said, with this infuriating confidence. "You always do."

The cat jumped down, winding between my legs one last time. I'd miss him more than I'd miss Marcus, which felt like its own kind of tragedy.

"No," I said. "I won't."

The thunder came after the lightning, this deep resonant boom that shook the windows. I walked out into the rain and didn't look back at the home I'd made with a man who'd stopped making space for me.