Strands

The coaxial cable lay severed on the living room floor like a dead snake, its copper entrails exposed. Elena had ripped it from the wall during last night's fight, severing not just their connection to the world but whatever remained between them.

Marcus stood in the doorway, watching her pack. She moved with terrifying efficiency — the way she'd approached everything lately. Their marriage had become like watching a **baseball** game from the parking lot: distant, muffled, and you only knew something significant had happened when everyone else started cheering.

"You're leaving," he said, not a question.

"I've been leaving for months, Marcus. You just refused to notice."

She was right. He'd been **running** from it too — running at dawn so he wouldn't have to face her over coffee, running late at work so he'd miss dinner, running from conversations that might crack something open. But you can only run so far before you circle back to yourself.

The new **padel** racket in the corner caught his eye. She'd started playing without him, found new friends, built a life that existed entirely outside their shared walls. He'd made jokes about it, called it "tennis for people who couldn't commit to the real thing." The cruelty of it now made his chest ache.

"I can fix the cable," he offered weakly.

Elena stopped folding a sweater. She looked at him with something worse than anger — a gentle, devastating pity. "Some connections can't be spliced back together, Marcus. The signal's just gone."

She zipped her suitcase. The sound was like a period at the end of a sentence he'd been reading his whole life.

Outside, a car honked. Her ride.

"Goodbye, Marcus."

The door clicked shut. He stood alone in the living room, surrounded by the artifacts of their dissolution, and finally understood: the cable wasn't the only thing she'd cut loose.