Wilting

The spinach was wilting in the colander, much like everything else in Sarah's apartment. Three weeks after Mark moved out, and she still couldn't bring herself to eat properly. The greens sat there, going slimy, a small betrayal she noticed each time she opened the refrigerator.

She'd taken up running again — not the joyful jogging of her twenties, but something more desperate. Miles of pavement at dawn, her breath visible in the cold morning air, running until her legs burned and her mind finally quieted. It was the only time she didn't think about him.

Thunder cracked overhead as Sarah stood at the kitchen counter, the storm outside mirroring the weather patterns of her marriage. She'd ignored the warning signs for months — the late nights at work, the distracted silences, the way he'd stopped looking at her across the dinner table. Now she was left with an apartment that felt too large and a future that felt too small.

Lightning illuminated the kitchen in a flash of white. In that brief moment, she saw Ollie, Mark's cat, sitting on the windowsill watching the rain. They'd fought about who would keep him. Sarah had insisted Mark take the cat, but somehow Ollie was still here, another piece of a life she couldn't quite let go of.

"You should be with him," she told the cat, her voice cracking from disuse. Ollie blinked slowly and continued watching the storm.

Sarah turned on the faucet, water drowning out the sound of her own thoughts. She'd tried calling Mark yesterday, just to hear his voice. He hadn't answered. That was probably for the best. Some things, once broken, couldn't be fixed.

She dumped the spinach into the pan, watching it collapse under the heat. There was something poetic about it, really — how something fresh and green could so quickly become something diminished. Sarah turned off the stove, untouched dinner cooling on the counter, and went to find her running shoes. Tomorrow she would run a little farther. Eventually, she would have to stop running. Eventually, she would have to learn to be alone.

But not tonight.