Wilted

I stand motionless in my dimly lit kitchen, my knuckles turning white where I grip the countertop. The water on the stove has stopped boiling without me noticing, just like everything else in my life these past months.

My phone lights up again—Marcus, of course. "We need to talk." The message feels less like an invitation and more like a sentence.

I catch my reflection in the darkened window above the sink. My hair hangs unwashed and dull, a wilderness I haven't bothered to tame since he moved out. Each gray strand feels like a small betrayal, though I'm not sure who I'm betraying anymore.

The spinach sits in its plastic package on the counter, another failed attempt at self-improvement. It's already starting to wilt, much like my conviction to become the kind of woman who eats deliberately and runs at dawn and doesn't let men dismantle her piece by piece.

Marcus always found my health kicks amusing. "You're so predictable," he'd say, running his thumb along my jawline while I stood at this very stove, stirring something green and nutritious. His touch had felt like devotion then. Now I wonder if it was just condescension disguised as intimacy.

I should be running—that's what all the breakup advice says. Put on your expensive sneakers and pound the pavement until your lungs burn and your problems seem smaller. But instead I'm here, watching steam rise from a pot I forgot about, feeling like the spinach: boiled down to something unrecognizable, stripped of everything that once made me crisp and vital.

The water bubbles furiously now, and I dump the spinach in without measuring. Let it be too much. Let it be wrong. Some days, survival is the only victory worth claiming, even if it tastes bitter and clings to your teeth.