The Morning After Everything Changed

Maya sat at the kitchen counter, the morning light filtering through the blinds in unforgiving stripes. She counted out her vitamins — D for the darkness she'd been feeling, B for the anxiety that kept her awake, magnesium because the internet said it would help her relax. The pills rattled in her palm like tiny accusations.

Her iPhone buzzed against the marble surface, the screen lighting up with a notification she didn't want to read. David's phone still sat where he'd left it last night, its dark screen a mirror of everything they hadn't said to each other in months.

Three years together, and they'd become experts at the art of careful silence. She remembered when they'd met — that first conversation that felt like lightning striking something dry and waiting in her chest. The way he'd looked at her across the crowded bar, like she was the only person worth seeing. Now he looked through her, or past her, or at something just over her shoulder that never quite materialized.

She should eat breakfast. She should take her vitamins. She should wake him up and have the conversation they'd been avoiding since she found those messages three weeks ago.

Instead, she stared at his phone, willing it to stay dark. The vitamins in her hand felt heavier than they should, like small stones she was supposed to swallow — each one a tiny attempt to fix something that couldn't be fixed with supplements and self-care routines. The D vitamin because she never went outside anymore. The iron because she'd been giving so much of herself away she'd become anemic in more ways than one.

Lightning flashed through the kitchen window, though she hadn't noticed the clouds gathering. A storm was coming — had been coming for a long time, really.

She tipped her hand and let the vitamins fall into the trash. Some mornings, you had to stop trying to fix yourself long enough to admit that nothing was going to be the same again.