Photosynthesis at 3 AM

Maya stood in her kitchen at 3:14 AM, mechanically chewing cold spinach straight from the plastic container. The refrigerator hummed its lonely nocturnal song. Her iPhone lay face-up on the counter, screen illuminating the dark with yet another notification from David—"we need to talk"—sent three hours ago when she'd finally fallen asleep.

She felt like a zombie, not the pop-culture kind with scattered brains and hunger for flesh, but the more terrifying variety: the living dead who woke up every day, showered, commuted, sat in meetings, smiled at colleagues, and felt absolutely nothing. The antidepressants—the vitamin D supplements, the omega-3s, the entire regimen of hope in capsule form—had stopped working months ago. She kept taking them anyway, a ritual of faith in a science that had abandoned her.

David wanted to discuss their marriage. She wanted to discuss how they'd both been moving through rooms like ghosts for three years, how she'd stopped being a person and started being a reflection of who he needed her to be. The spinach tasted metallic, like blood or exhaustion or truth.

Her phone buzzed again. David was calling. This time, she answered.

"I'm eating spinach in the dark," she said.

Silence. Then, softly: "I'm in the driveway."

They sat on the kitchen floor, side by side, not touching, as dawn crept through the window like a secret. David admitted he'd been having an affair. Maya admitted she'd been relieved when she found the receipts, grateful for a reason to finally feel something, even if it was devastation.

"We're both just trying to stay alive," he said, which wasn't forgiveness or explanation, just fact.

She finished the spinach. "Let's figure out how to do that separately."

Later, as he packed his things, she deleted the vitamin reminders from her phone. Some things you had to stop faking before you could start becoming real again.