The Things We Don't Say

The cat scratched at the bedroom door again, a rhythmic reminder that mornings still arrived even when you wished they wouldn't. Sarah lay beside me, her breathing steady and infuriatingly peaceful. My iphone glowed on the nightstand—3:47 AM. Another sleepless night in what used to be our marriage.

I slipped out of bed, padded to the kitchen. The fox mug she'd bought me in Santa Fe last summer sat in the sink, stained with yesterday's coffee. We'd been happy then, or at least we'd been good at pretending.

The vitamin bottle caught my eye—her prenatal vitamins, expiring next month. The expiration date might become a joke between us, if we survived long enough to make jokes again. She'd stopped trying to conceive two months ago after the second miscarriage. I didn't blame her. I didn't know how to stop trying either.

"You're up," Sarah said from the doorway. The cat wove between her legs, demanding breakfast.

"Couldn't sleep."

She moved to the counter, fingers brushing against my hand. The touch was electric and devastating, full of everything we'd lost and everything I still wanted.

"I saw your texts," she said quietly.

My stomach dropped. The iphone in my pocket suddenly felt heavy, incriminating. Not an affair—never that—but something almost as destructive. I'd been texting my sister about apartments, about separation logistics, about endings.

"Sarah—"

"Don't." She turned, eyes bright in the dim kitchen light. "Just tell me something true. Something real."

The cat meowed insistently. The fox mug watched from the sink. The vitamins waited on the counter like tiny white accusations.

"I'm terrified," I said, and the words broke something loose in my chest. "That I'm failing you. That I can't fix what's broken. That you're slipping away and I don't know how to reach you anymore."

She stepped closer, and for the first time in months, she really looked at me. "I'm not slipping away," she whispered. "I'm right here. Waiting for you to see me."

The sun began to rise through the kitchen window, painting everything in soft gold. Some things, I realized, don't need fixing—just witnessing.