What We Left Behind

The apartment was quieter now, but the reminders were everywhere. On the mantle sat the ceramic **baseball** you'd given me—that quirky piece of kitsch from that roadside stand in Nebraska, the summer we drove west with no destination and too much hope. You said it represented something about American nostalgia. I said it represented us trying too hard.

Your **cat**, Luna, still curled on my pillow each night, as if you might materialize beside her. She was the one thing you'd insisted on keeping joint custody of, though you never came by anymore. Her purring felt like accusation.

The **cable** bill arrived yesterday, addressed to both of us, another bureaucratic tie we'd forgotten to sever. I remembered watching you unspool that black cord from the wall the day you moved out, how you'd said, "You won't need this—we never watched anything anyway." You were wrong. We'd watched each other, for years, until there was nothing left to see.

I walked past the park today and saw an old man playing catch with his **dog**, a golden retriever with graying muzzle. The way the dog waited, tail thumping against the grass, uncomplicated joy at the simplest act of being chosen—that broke something loose in me. Animals don't strategize their exits. They don't calculate the emotional ROI of staying.

Then there was the **bear**. Not literal, but the way you'd described yourself that last night at the kitchen table, whiskey in hand: "I'm hibernating, Mara. I've been hibernating for three years." You said you needed to wake up, even if waking meant losing everything. You looked at me with those sad, intelligent eyes, and I realized then that some creatures are meant to be solitary. That loving you had been like trying to domesticate something wild—it was never going to end well.

I pack the baseball into a box. Luna watches from the windowsill. The cable company confirms my disconnection request. Some bonds sever cleanly; others leave scars. You taught me that.

I don't know where you are now. Probably somewhere north, where winters are harsh enough to justify the darkness you carried. I hope you found what you needed. I hope you're not alone, unless that's what you want.

Most days, I'm learning to believe I'm enough company for myself.

But sometimes, when Luna curls against my chest, purring like a small engine of forgiveness, I let myself miss you. Not the version who left—the one who hadn't figured out he was a bear yet. The one who still believed he could be anything for me.

That version never existed. And that's the hardest part.