Cable to Nowhere

The coaxial cable hung from the wall like a dead snake, its silver connector staring at me with mock innocence. Three years of long-distance video calls reduced to this severed tether.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub, scissors in hand, staring at my reflection. Gray hairs had begun colonizing my temples like weeds through concrete—visible proof of the thirty-eight years pressing against my consciousness. Julia used to trace her fingers through them, calling them "threads of wisdom." Now the bathroom mirror showed only evidence of what I'd become alone.

The doctor's voice echoed in my memory: *You're not getting younger. Your body needs this. I'm prescribing a supplement regimen.* She'd pushed the orange prescription pad across her desk, her clinical detachment stinging more than the verdict itself. Vitamin D deficiency. How emblematic. Even my sadness was medically quantifiable now.

I stood there remembering our last fight. You'd called from Tokyo, exhausted and lonely, complaining about the hotel's pool. *I went swimming at 3am,* you'd said, *and the water was so cold I thought I'd have a heart attack. And I realized: I'd rather freeze with you in our cramped apartment than swim alone in luxury.*

The memory hit me like nausea. That's when you decided to end it—to "liberate us both from the slow death of waiting." noble words. Selfish execution.

Now, weeks later, I found myself doing the same things: taking vitamins with breakfast, working remotely, scrolling through photos of us at that beach house in Portugal where everything was orange and golden and possible. I'd held your hair back when you drank too much wine. You'd held my hand through panic attacks and job rejections. We were cable and anchor, tether and sail.

The scissors glinted under fluorescent lights. I could cut the hair. Cut the cable. Sever every reminder.

Instead, I opened the bottle of orange pills and swallowed one dry. Then I knelt and began reconnecting the cable to the wall. If I couldn't have you, at least I could have the digital ghost of us—reruns of the show we marathoned together, movies we never finished, the echo of your laugh across thousands of miles.

Some connections, I realized, shouldn't be severed. Even when they hurt like swallowing stones.