Conductive

The spinach wilted in the colander, much like her marriage had—slowly, without anyone noticing until it was too late. Elena watched the water drain away, thinking about how seven years could disappear like that. The greens had seemed so promising at the farmer's market that morning, vibrant and alive. Now they looked tired, defeated by time and neglect.

Marcus was already asleep when she returned to their bedroom. She could see the blue glow of his phone illuminating his face in the darkness. They hadn't spoken since dinner, unless you count the monosyllables he'd grunted over his plate. Elena lay beside him, careful not to touch his side of the mattress.

Outside, lightning struck somewhere nearby. The flash illuminated everything—the discarded clothes on the chair, the stack of unread books on her nightstand, the wedding photo that had fallen face-down on the dresser months ago. In that split second of electric clarity, she saw it all: the pattern of their deterioration, the small deaths that had accumulated until something fundamental had died between them.

She got up and walked to the spare room. There it was—coiled like a black snake on the floor. The fiber optic cable she'd ordered after the fight about their internet service, a petty argument that had spiraled into something else entirely. Marcus had called her obsessive. She had called him indifferent. Both had been right.

The cable was supposed to connect them to better streaming, faster downloads, something they could enjoy together in the evenings. Instead, it had sat there for three weeks, a physical manifestation of everything they'd left unfinished.

Elena picked it up and returned to the bedroom. Lightning flashed again, closer this time. She stood over Marcus, watching him sleep, remembering how his forehead used to wrinkle when he was worried about her, how his hands used to seek hers in the dark automatically, without thought. That muscle memory had faded too.

She could wake him. They could talk. They could finally connect the cable, literally and metaphorically, and try to find what they'd lost. Or she could pack a bag. The spinach in the kitchen would keep until morning. Marcus would wake to an empty bed and a note, or to her sitting at the edge of the mattress, waiting.

Lightning cracked the sky open, and in the thunder that followed, Elena made her choice. Some connections, once severed, can't be re-spliced. She left the cable on the nightstand and went to the kitchen to finish making her lunch for tomorrow.