The Unspoken Things Between Us

You had spinach in your teeth. That's what I kept thinking while you told me you were leaving. A small green wedge lodged between your front teeth, mocking me with its visibility. I should have told you—that's what partners do, right? But somewhere in the third year of our marriage, I'd stopped correcting you. Stopped pointing out the little things. Maybe that's why we're here.

The orange sunset burned through the kitchen window, gilding your profile in that familiar way that used to make my chest ache. Tonight it just made me tired. You were saying something about finding yourself, about needing space, about how we'd grown apart like two boats drifting in different currents. The clichés fell from your lips like rehearsed lines, and I wondered if you'd practiced them in front of the mirror.

Behind us, the TV flickered silently—someone had bumped the cable connection again. The screen showed static gray snow, a dead channel in a dead room. I remembered when we'd moved in together, twisting coaxial cables behind the entertainment center, laughing when our hands brushed. Now the cable lay loose behind the TV stand, a black snake that had given up on connecting anything to anything.

"Say something," you said.

I looked at the spinach still trapped in your smile. At the way your hands wouldn't stop moving, fingers curling around your wine glass, then releasing, then curling again. At the orange light catching the silver hairs at your temples that I'd pretended not to notice.

"You have something in your teeth," I said.

You froze. Then your tongue darted out, finding it, and you laughed—that surprised, breathy laugh I'd fallen in love with in college. For a second, we were just us again, in this kitchen, in this life we'd built.

"That's it?" you asked. "That's all you have to say?"

The sun slipped below the horizon. The room dimmed into blue shadow.

"No," I said. "But it's a start."