Dead Voltage

The storm outside mirrored the one inside me. You become a zombie in a marriage after seven years, not the flesh-eating kind, but the slow sort—going through motions, speaking lines you've memorized, coming home to a person whose face you once knew like your own.

Our dog, Buster, sensed it first. The golden retriever who used to sleep between us now took to lying in the hallway, as if guarding against something he couldn't name.

"You're not happy, are you?" Sarah said without looking up from her iPhone. Her thumb moved rhythmically, that familiar swipe-scroll motion that had replaced conversation in our bed.

Lightning cracked the sky, illuminating her face in stark flashes. I saw the lines that had formed around her mouth, the ones I'd stopped noticing somewhere between the promotion I got and the promotion she wanted but didn't.

"When did we become this?" I asked.

She set down the phone. In the blue light, her eyes found mine—really found them—for the first time in months.

"The day we stopped asking questions," she said softly.

Buster whined from the hallway. Another flash of lightning, closer this time. The storm would break soon. Something had to break.

"I still love you," I said, and the words felt like confession, like surrender. "But I don't know if I love us anymore."

Sarah's hand moved toward mine in the darkness. Her fingers were cold, hesitant. When they touched, something sparked—not like the lightning outside, but something slower, deeper. A recognition.

"Maybe," she whispered, "we don't have to be zombies anymore."

The rain started then, sudden and cleansing, and Buster finally came back to the bed, curling at our feet like he used to. Some storms destroy. Others just wash you clean enough to begin again.