What Remains

The coffee shop still smells like her. Burnt sugar and something underneath that might be rot. You sit at your corner table though the barista won't make eye contact, though the other customers shift away like grief might be contagious.

Elena's last text glows on your phone: dont forget we need milk. and also i love you. in that order of importance

Ten days ago. Before.

You whisper to the empty chair, "They still make your drink too sweet."

The chair doesn't answer but something shifts beside you. A displacement. The way space reorganizes itself around an invisible body. You've felt it everywhere lately—this sensation of Elena not being gone but being beside, just slightly out of phase.

Your coffee tastes like dirt and endings. The fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting everything in a sickly yellow. Through the window, people pass in their winter coats, scarves wrapped tight against the December cold. They're living. Moving forward. You're suspended here, in this corner, in this moment that won't end.

The empty chair across from you still holds the impression of her. Or maybe you're imagining it.

——

The park bench overlooks water going gray at the edges. You remember Elena here, throwing bread to ducks though the signs forbade it, laughing with her throat exposed. "What else are they supposed to eat? Quinoa?"

Now the ducks circle, agitated, swimming patterns that spell out words you can't quite read.

"I miss you," you tell the December air.

Something cold touches the back of your neck. Fingers, maybe. You don't turn around because you know what you'll see—nothing, or worse than nothing, the shape of Elena flickering like a television losing signal.

You've been seeing her everywhere. In mirrors. In windows. In the space between sleeping and waking where the dead come knocking. Elena's face gray-blue, hair wet though it hasn't rained, eyes asking questions you can't answer.

Did you mean to?

The pond reflects a sky full of birds that aren't there. The water is dark, rippling with wind that carries the smell of algae and rot. You think about that other water. The way it looked that night—black and endless, swallowing everything.

A child runs past, chasing after a ball. Her mother calls out, voice sharp with worry. You watch them reunite, the mother pulling the child close, checking her over. Making sure she's safe. Making sure she's still breathing.

You look back at the water. The ducks have stopped their circling. They're all facing you now, perfectly still, as if waiting for something.

——

Elena had a painting here once. Small show, local artists, nothing major but she'd been so proud. You'd watched her stand beside her work—blues and grays and sharp slashes of red—talking to strangers, lighting up in a way she never did at home anymore.

The art gallery replaced Elena's painting with a photograph of an empty room. Window open. Curtains billowing like surrender flags.

In the photograph's reflection, you see two women. One solid. One translucent. Both wearing the same expression—trapped.

The gallery is nearly empty today. Just you and an elderly couple examining a sculpture in the corner. Their voices are low, reverent, the way people speak in churches. This place is a kind of church, you suppose. A place where people come to witness beauty, to feel something beyond themselves.

You wonder what Elena felt, standing here that night. Pride, yes. But also—what? Relief? To be away from you, from the apartment that had become a cage, from your questions and suspicions and the way your love had curdled into something else entirely.

The gallery guard walks past. Glances at you. Moves on. You're just another person looking at art. Just another body taking up space.

But in the photograph's glass, your reflection wavers. And beside it, Elena's face materializes, mouth opening in a silent scream.

——

Your apartment breathes without her. You walk to the bathroom. Elena's lipstick still on the counter, uncapped now, as if someone's been using it. The color called Defiant smeared on the mirror, writing words in red:

WHO ARE YOU?

Your hands shake. You didn't write that. Haven't touched the lipstick since—

Since when? Since Elena stopped coming home some nights? Since she started smelling like someone else's perfume? Since you began checking her phone, following her, becoming the kind of woman who turns love into surveillance?

You wipe the mirror clean. The red smears like arterial spray.

In the glass, behind your reflection: Elena. Standing in the doorway. Hair dripping. Skin mottled blue-gray. Lips moving, forming words without sound.

You spin around.

Empty doorway. Just the hum of the refrigerator and your ragged breathing.

The apartment is too quiet. Has been too quiet since. You've thought about getting a cat, a dog, something living to fill the silence. But what right do you have to care for something living? What right do you have to anything anymore?

In the bedroom, Elena's side of the closet still holds her clothes. The green dress. The red one. The black one is missing—the one she wore that night. You'd burned it three days after, in the bathtub, watching the fabric curl and blacken. The smoke detector had screamed. You'd ripped out the batteries.

——

New Year's Eve. The pier where you first kissed. Where Elena tasted like wine and possibility and you thought: I could love this person so much it would destroy me.

Prophecy, it turns out.

The water is black glass. No moon. Just city lights fragmenting across the surface like broken promises. You stand at the edge and think about drowning.

Behind you: footsteps. Wet. Deliberate.

You don't turn. "I know you're there."

"Do you?" Elena's voice, but wrong. Waterlogged. "Do you know what you did?"

"It was an accident."

"Was it?" Closer now. You can smell her—lake water and rot and the perfume she wore that last night. "We were right here. On this pier. When I tried to leave."

"You slipped. You fell back into the water."

"I stumbled." Elena's breath on your neck now. "I reached for you. And you let go."

"I couldn't—"

"You could." And now Elena is beside you, fully visible, dress soaked through, skin mottled blue-gray, lips tinged blue. "You looked around. Made sure no one was watching. You saw me surface. Saw me struggling. And you walked away."

Your mouth opens. Closes. The truth lodged in your throat like a stone.

The fight. Elena stepping back, her heel catching the pier's edge. Your hand reaching—or not reaching. The moment suspended like amber.

The rage blooming dark behind your ribs. Elena leaving. Elena choosing someone else. Elena taking herself away.

If I can't have you—

The splash. Her head breaking the surface once. Twice. The December water black as oil.

Your eyes scanning the empty boardwalk. The distant lights of restaurants. No one watching. No one there to see.

And you'd walked away. Left her thrashing in the cold. Left her calling your name until the water filled her mouth.

"I don't know," you whisper. "I don't know why I didn't help you."

"Yes, you do." Elena's hand—cold, so cold—wraps around your wrist. "You've always known. That's why you see me everywhere."

"I'm sorry—"

"Come with me. Into the water. It's where we both belong now."

And you realize—Elena isn't behind you anymore. She's in front of you. Between you and the city. Between you and the world of the living.

"I can't—"

"You killed me." Elena's face is inches away. Eyes clouded. Mouth full of lake water. "You watched me drown. Did you think I'd let you go?"

You try to step back but Elena's grip is iron.

"I didn't mean to," you say, crying now.

"Yes," Elena says. "You did."

And she pulls.