While he goes to the bakery for cinnamon rolls, she declutters the kitchen, one cabinet at a time.
Memories spill out of the first cabinet. The morning chill, she doesn’t need that. Coffee with friends, rich and fragrant, not so important. Years of Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Years, she didn’t see those people anymore, so they could go. Family vacations, she still had the pictures, so why keep duplicates? The move from one town to another, so disruptive, she could toss it. The death of her brother two decades ago, she was tired of dragging that out with the spice jars. Fifty years of marriage and two children, old news. Seventy-five years in California, boring.
When he comes home, he asks her why she’s staring at an empty cabinet. She says, Who are you?
published in Write Under the Moon
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