What We Lose in the Lightning

The cat watched him from the windowsill as he chopped spinach for dinner—that vibrant green that always reminded him of Thursday nights with Sarah. Three years of Thursday nights, broken like a dropped plate. She'd left him eight months ago for someone she'd met at padel lessons, of all things. He'd tried taking up the sport himself after, thinking maybe if he understood the rhythm of the game, the quick exchanges at the net, the way you have to trust your partner to cover your side of the court—maybe he'd understand where it all went wrong.

Now lightning split the sky outside, and the cat jumped down, pressing against his leg. He'd never liked cats before. Sarah was allergic, so they'd never had one. After she left, this mangy tomcat started showing up at his back door during storms, and somewhere along the way, he'd stopped shooing it away.

"You hungry?" he asked, already knowing the answer. He put some spinach in a bowl, added a bit of salmon from his own dinner. The cat ate like it hadn't seen food in days, purring loudly enough that he could feel the vibration through the floorboards.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the apartment, catching his reflection in the window—thirty-five, alone on a Saturday night, feeding a stray cat while his ex-wife was probably somewhere on a padel court, laughing at someone else's jokes. The thought didn't sting like it used to. Maybe that was the worst part.

He sat on the floor with his own dinner, watching the rain blur the city lights into watercolor streaks. The cat finished eating and curled into his lap, heavy and warm and absurdly present. He thought about calling his mother to tell her he was fine, really, but it was late on the East Coast. Instead he sat there as thunder rolled overhead, feeling the cat's heartbeat against his stomach, thinking about how strange it was that the spinach still tasted like something he'd cooked for someone who no longer existed in his life, how the body remembers what the mind tries to forget, how sometimes you have to lose everything to figure out what you actually want to keep.