The Color of Goodbye

You learn a lot about a marriage at 6 AM.

Maya stood at the kitchen counter, her blond **hair** pulled back in that severe way she'd adopted since the promotion. The morning light caught the gray at her temples – new, or maybe I'd just stopped noticing. She was **running** on caffeine and resentment, three weeks into her new VP role, and I was still sleeping in the guest room.

'Your **vitamin**,' she said, sliding the D3 supplement across the counter without looking up. 'Doctor's orders.'

The same doctor who'd told us to 'take time apart.' The same doctor who'd nodded sympathetically when Maya admitted she'd met someone – a colleague, brilliant, unencumbered by mortgage payments or decade-old betrayals.

I took the pill anyway. Some habits survive extinction.

Last summer, we'd gone **swimming** in the Mediterranean, that trip we'd saved for five years. She'd floated on her back, smiling at something beyond the horizon, while I treaded water beside her, already drowning. That's when I knew: staying requires more effort than leaving.

Now I watched her pack a suitcase – not for business this time. The **orange** sundress she wore was the same one from our anniversary dinner two years ago, before everything calcified between us. Before I forgot that marriage needs tending like a garden, not just existing in the background of shared utility bills and passing acquaintanceship.

'I'm not coming back,' she said, finally meeting my eyes.

'I know.' I didn't ask about him. Some questions are just different forms of self-harm.

She zipped the bag. The sound was louder than anything we'd said to each other in months. Maybe in years.

'You should start **running** again,' she offered, almost kindly. 'You used to love it.'

'I will.' We both knew it was a lie.

The door clicked shut behind her. I stood alone in our kitchen, surrounded by the artifacts of a life that no longer fit either of us, and finally understood that some vitamins are supposed to be hard to swallow.