When Nothing Remains
“Taking a cup of coffee is not the same as stealing a bank account. The list goes on. I don’t understand why you would do this to me. After all these years… after everything… you would divorce me like this?” His voice trembled, though whether from anger or fear he couldn’t tell.
“I don’t need this anymore,” she said. “It’s too much. I can’t stand the thought of losing you again… not after this.”
Not after this. The words hovered, echoing, twisting inside him. The other woman, the heartbreak of being left, the desperate hope of being chosen again—it all pressed at the edges of his mind, blurring with memories he wasn’t sure he could trust.
Outside, banners for Holocaust Remembrance Day flapped in the wind at the Jewish Community Center across the street– he could see it from his window. They seemed almost alive, watching him and mocking as they flapped. He’d seen the exhibit already, photography of piles of shoes and hair, the gas chambers, the ovens, the scheduled dates for survivors to share their story. The weight of it all pressed into his chest, as did the emptiness that filled the apartment.Â
“Why do we try so hard to end this?” he said. “It feels like we just got started. Why say goodbye so easily?”
She didn’t answer—or maybe she did, but it was drowned beneath the pounding of his own thoughts. He imagined her sigh, the disappointment, the quiet fury. I can’t stand the sight of you anymore. I wish you would just go. The words weren’t hers—they were his, projected, imagined, real-feeling, and impossible to ignore.
Finally, a real voice: “It’s just… if you hadn’t reached out to her, none of this would have happened.”
He pictured her shrugging, sipping coffee, calm, untouchable. And yet in his mind, the cup was shattered on the floor, splashing over the stacks of financial statements, over the carefully organized books of her father’s business. I didn’t trust you anymore, he imagined himself shouting. Everything I gave you… gone.
He left, slamming the door—but was it him, or the echo of him? The apartment seemed to tilt, the banners outside flapping like wings, the past and present colliding in a dizzying blur. And somewhere in the room, maybe in the smell of burnt coffee or the uneven stacks of paper, he felt the sting of loss, both real and imagined, folding over itself endlessly.
