The Sphinx at the Kitchen Table

The goldfish died three weeks before David stopped speaking to me in complete sentences.

I stood at the kitchen counter, forcing frozen spinach into a colander, watching the ice melt into dark green water. David was running again—his third time this week, though he'd always claimed to hate exercise. I could see him through the window, his silhouette receding down the street like a promise he intended to break.

We'd become a sphinx to each other—ancient, riddle-heavy, impossible to read. I'd lie awake beside him at night, cataloging the small distances: how he'd stopped reaching for my hand in his sleep, how his body curved away from mine like a parenthesis I wasn't meant to fill. The silence between us had grown solid, something you could touch.

I didn't know how to tell him that I knew about the emails. That I'd seen his phone light up with messages from someone named Elena, messages that made him smile in a way I hadn't seen in years. I didn't know how to bear the weight of that knowledge without crushing us both.

The goldfish had been easier. It had simply floated to the top of its bowl, peaceful as a thought suspended in water. We'd flushed it together, standing over the toilet like conspirators, and David had cried, actually cried, letting me hold him while his shoulders shook.

That was the last time he'd let me touch him with any real tenderness.

I dropped the spinach into a pan, listening to the violent hiss as it hit the hot oil. Through the window, David was smaller now, a distant runner moving toward something I couldn't see, carrying something I wasn't meant to know.

The truth was simple as gravity: we were bearing separate weights now. And I didn't know if we could ever put them down together.