The Cart Still Buys His Milk

it's almost 3am and i'm redoing the grocery order because sleep isn't happening and this is at least a task with an end. the app remembers everything, which is usually convenient. tonight it puts his oat milk at the top of "buy it again," ahead of my coffee, ahead of anything i've actually bought since he left, because the account counts every order since we moved in together and he bought that milk more than i've bought anything in four years.

i tell myself i'm ordering it for banana bread. i haven't made banana bread since march.

i almost delete it. my thumb's right there. but deleting means opening the row of everything else he's still in, the crackers, the specific brand of coffee filters, the dish soap neither of us liked but kept buying out of habit, and i don't want to look at a list that long tonight.

so i add the oat milk to the cart, like i have every two weeks since february, and i check out, and some version of this apartment still gets fed the way it used to, twice a month, on time, whether or not he's here to drink it.

i put the phone down. i don't reorder my own coffee. i still have some.