The Cable Between Us

The HDMI cable lay severed between us like a dead snake, its copper entrails exposed. Paul had ripped it from the wall during the fight—our third argument that week about the same thing: whether to stay in this city, this apartment, this life we'd built like a house of cards in an earthquake zone.

I picked at the spinach stuck between my teeth from dinner, the meal I'd spent two hours preparing while Paul worked late again. The spinach had been his idea—'we should eat healthier,' he'd said last month, as if fiber could fix what was breaking between us. Now it sat in my back teeth like a metaphor.

'You're wearing that hat?' Paul asked, not looking up from his phone. The fedora had been a gift from my father, dead three years now. I only wore it when I felt small, when I needed armor against the world. Against him.

'It's cold outside,' I said, though we both knew I wasn't going anywhere.

The truth was, I'd been running for months. Not physically—though I'd started jogging at dawn, returning breathless and flushed as if I'd escaped something—but emotionally. Every conversation became a tactical retreat. Every touch felt like I was already saying goodbye. I was running toward something I couldn't name, away from everything I'd built.

'You're doing it again,' Paul said softly. 'That thing where you disappear while you're still in the room.'

I looked at the broken cable, the spinach on our plates, the hat that smelled like my father's cologne and cowardice. I thought about the running shoes by the door, how they'd become the only honest thing about me.

'I'm not disappearing,' I lied. 'I'm just waiting for you to notice I'm already gone.'

The silence that followed was the loudest thing in the room.Outside, rain began to fall. I stood up, grabbed my coat, and didn't look back at the cable, the spinach, the hat. I just started running.