Currents We Don't Name

I'm watching the cable news when the phone finally rings. Through the window, lightning illuminates the thinning hair on my husband's head as he sleeps on the couch, each silver strand a map of our twenty years together. I remember when we went swimming in Lake Michigan on our honeymoon, how we felt like we could dive into each other and never come up for air.

Now I'm here with my wilted spinach, staring at the TV while Dr. Ramirez's number flashes across the screen. The biopsy results. The words stage three still echoing in my ears from three days ago, but Arthur hasn't asked once.

"The weather service issued a flash flood warning," the anchor says, and I think about drowning—the slow kind, where you don't notice the water rising until it's over your head. How I've been drowning in this living room for years, and neither of us has reached out a hand.

Arthur stirs. "Anything good on?" he mumbles, eyes still closed.

"Just the storm," I say, and he doesn't ask what I mean. He never does anymore.

The spinach sits cold in its bowl. My hair, the gray I've stopped coloring six months ago, falls over my eyes. I watch lightning fracture the sky outside, brilliant and terrible, and realize some storms don't break anything—they just show you what was already broken.

I let the phone ring until it stops. Then I go to the kitchen and throw the spinach in the garbage. Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow I'll tell him about the cancer. Tomorrow I'll ask if he even remembers how to swim.