The Green Between Our Teeth

Maria came home to find David on the balcony, rain plastering his hair to his skull, cigarette burning between his fingers like a dying star. They hadn't spoken in three days—not really spoke, not about the way their marriage had been shambling forward like a fucking zombie, limbs dragging through the motions of dinner and sleep and breakfast again.

"I went running today," she said, stepping through the sliding door. Her knees still ached from the pavement. "Six miles."

He nodded, exhaling smoke into the downpour. "Good."

She placed the takeout containers on the small table between them. Greek salad. His favorite. She'd watched the woman at the restaurant scoop extra spinach onto his portion, thinking maybe this small thing could bridge the canyon that had opened between them in their apartment, in their bed, in the silences that stretched longer each night.

"There's a lightning storm coming," David said, not looking at her. "They said on the radio it might be bad."

Maria sat. She hated how he refused to meet her eyes, how he'd been refusing since she told him she needed more, since he'd told her he didn't know if he had more to give. She'd spent the last month running herself into exhaustion, trying to outrace the hollow feeling in her chest, trying to make her body hurt enough that her heart wouldn't notice it was starving.

"The spinach looks good," he said, finally lifting the lid.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to reach across the table and grab his face and demand he look at her, really see her—the woman he'd married three years ago, the one who still believed they could be more than this. But she just picked up her fork.

Lightning cracked the sky open, white and sudden as a bone breaking, illuminating the wet balcony and David's face in profile. For a second she saw something raw there—fear or grief or maybe just the weight of all the things they weren't saying.

"David," she started, but he was already standing, reaching for her hand, his palm cold and damp. The spinach sat untouched between them as the thunder finally caught up with the flash, and outside, the world broke open and wept.