The Weight of Winter
The cable car swayed over the mountain, a tiny metal box suspended between peaks. Sarah pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching the world below shrink into insignificance. Three months after the funeral, she still moved through her days like a zombie—automatic, hollow, performing the motions of living without actually inhabiting them.
Her phone buzzed. David's name lit up the screen. Again.
She'd told him she needed space after the miscarriage, but he kept treating space as something finite, something that could be exhausted with enough patience. As if grief were a pool he could drain if he just kept bailing water with his kindness, his casseroles, his unbearable presence.
"You can't just bear it alone," he'd said last night, his voice cracking.
The word had made her flinch. Bear. As if carrying this weight were noble. As if the sheer endurance of loss were something to be proud of.
The cable car lurched. Outside, snow began to fall—thick, silent flakes that stuck to the windows and blurred the world into white. She thought of the bear they'd seen on their honeymoon in Montana, standing in the river, silhouetted against mountains that looked like these. How David had grabbed her arm, whispered, "Look at him, he's just... existing. Just being what he is."
She'd squeezed his hand back then, full of something she couldn't name then and couldn't find now.
The car approached the station. Her phone lit up again: a photo from David—a puppy at the shelter, the caption: "Maybe?"
The presumption made her want to scream. The way he kept trying to fix things, to replace what couldn't be replaced. But as she stepped off the cable car into the biting cold, something cracked open inside her. Not healing—not yet. But maybe the beginning of wanting to.
She typed back: Not today. But maybe coffee tomorrow?
The three dots appeared immediately. Below, the pool at the base of the mountain reflected the gray sky, and for the first time in months, Sarah thought she might eventually learn to swim again.