Static

The spinach wilted in the pan, exactly like our marriage—slowly, without fanfare, until it was unrecognizable from what it'd started as. Richard stood by the stove, his back to me, while I watched lightning fracture the sky beyond the kitchen window. The storm had been threatening all afternoon, much like the conversation we'd been avoiding for three years.

'You're not listening,' I said, my voice flat.

He turned, wooden spoon in hand. 'I'm trying to make dinner, Sarah. Can we save the existential crisis for after we eat?'

The apartment was too quiet except for the rain and water hissing against the glass. Outside, the city blurred into gray streaks. Inside, everything was painfully sharp: the countertop cluttered with unopened mail, the half-empty wineglasses from breakfast, the pyramid of toma cans Richard had built beside the sink—his little architectural statement when he thought I wasn't watching. He called it art. I called it displacement activity.

'My mother called today,' I said.

'How's she doing?'

'She asked if we're still trying.' I watched his shoulders stiffen. 'I didn't know what to say.'

The spinach was done. He dumped it onto two plates, the steam rising between us like something we couldn't cross.

'We agreed,' he said softly. 'No more discussions about—'

'I know what we agreed. But I wake up every morning with this hollow feeling, Richard. Like there's this space where something should be growing.' I gestured at the wilted greens. 'This isn't enough anymore.'

Another flash of lightning illuminated his face—exhausted, resigned, the lines around his mouth deepening by the day. He set the plates down and reached for my hand, his fingers cold.

'I know,' he said. 'I feel it too.'

Thunder shook the windows. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm pierced through the rain. We stood there in our expensive kitchen with our dead houseplant and our marriage that refused to die properly, and I realized the saddest thing wasn't that we'd stopped trying. It was that we were too comfortable in our misery to leave.

'Eat,' Richard said. 'Before it gets cold.'

So we did. We sat on opposite sides of the island and ate our wilted spinach while the storm washed over the city, neither of us saying what we both knew: some things, once broken, can't be fixed by simply waiting them out.