The Last Day

It’s her face that does it - sharp and sudden, a pang in my chest that erases everything else. I can’t think straight when I look at the photo I hold. Her smile is bright, careless; the purple scarf with white stripes looped around her neck. The café carries on around me - the clink of cups, the hum of the grinder, the lazy chatter - but the sounds don’t reach me. There is only the rain thrumming against the glass and the weight of a memory.

A waitress appears to my left, slim and efficient in her apron, balancing a plate with a single brownie and a cup of hot chocolate - my order. She sets them down, offers a warm, unknowing smile, and moves away. I hope she didn’t notice the salt on my cheeks.

I reach into my jacket and pull out the thing I bring everywhere, wrapped and comfortingly warm. The scarf. Purple, white stripes, the wool worn soft where her hands used to smooth it. I lay it across my lap and bury my fingers in the fibres; the tears come again, hot and useless. For a moment the steam rising from the cup smells like the first time we shared it - her breath in winter, the faint perfume that used to cling to this wool. Her laugh rises in my head, bright as honey. For a second the apartment, the TV, the nights we huddled under the shared blanket reappear, whole and ordinary.

I take a bite of the brownie because it is the only thing familiar left. It’s exactly how it used to be - moist, the chocolate rich - and the taste is a small, guilty comfort. I haven’t eaten one alone since the last time we came here together. When I sip the hot chocolate, it sears, and I let the pain be a distraction. The scarf and the picture won’t let me forget for long.

How could I have known our time was limited? How could I have guessed that what felt endless would stop, anticlimactic and painful? The idea of moving on sits like a command inside me, something she told me to do with a softness that made it unbearable: “Live,” she said. “Don’t let me be an excuse.” I tried - God, I tried - but I’m walking in circles. I whisper it to the photograph, so quiet I almost don’t hear myself.

“I’m trying. I’m trying.”

Her face is my background on the phone. Her face is flattened into the wallet I won’t open. Her face kept me afloat; now it is a weight I can’t set down. The café’s bustle keeps going, indifferent. Someone brushes my shoulder on their way out; the ghost of that touch folds into memory - her head on my shoulder as we watched something silly on television, the way she teased the milk until it left a moustache on my lip. I laugh once, then swallow the laugh because it feels wrong.

When I fold the scarf, a small whiff of her perfume haunts the wool. I slip the photo into the inner pocket of my shirt, beneath two thick layers. I stand, jacket tightening around me, the brownie gone in discreet bites, the cup warm against my palms. The bell above the café door rings as I leave; rain meets the verandah and the world blurs into grey. My hood goes up, breath steaming in the cold.

I have my route planned. I won’t go straight home. First the florist - her favourite shop - then the cemetery, then home to the couch and the movie list we never finished. I tell myself these are steps, small and manageable. I tell myself they are progress.

Maybe they are. Maybe they are the only rituals left that let me pretend she is still here. When I walk, the city muffles into a rhythm: tyres, footsteps, a distant siren. I press the scarf closer to my ribs as if I could press her back into me. When the memories replay, they will do so differently - softer, like something seen from a doorway. For now I have to move through this day in the only way I know how: with the scarf in my pocket and the plan in my head, hoping the motion of my feet will become meaning.