Vitamins for the Living Dead

I place the **vitamin** supplement on the kitchen counter — a little orange oval that promises energy, promises life, promises something I haven't felt in months. Marcus watches me with those hollow eyes, eyes that used to hold galaxies when we first met in that shitty coffee shop near the hospital where we both worked impossible hours. Now he just watches. The light behind them flickered out somewhere between our fifth anniversary and his promotion to regional manager.

The irony isn't lost on me. We're surrounded by abundance: organic **spinach** wilting in the crisper drawer because neither of us has the energy to cook, a golden retriever named Barnaby who deserves better parents, and this house we mortgaged thirty years of our lives to afford. I should be grateful. Gratitude is just another pill I swallow dry each morning.

"You going for your run?" Marcus asks. His voice scrapes like sandpaper.

"Yeah. **Running** helps. You know that."

"Right. Important. Healthy."

He turns back to his phone, his thumb scrolling through something that holds more interest than my body, my presence, my existence. We've become roommates who share a bed and a mortgage, two **zombies** shuffling through the motions of a life that died while we were too busy to notice. The sex stopped eight months ago. The conversations stopped somewhere around month six. Now we just coexist in this curated purgatory of brunch dates and couples therapy we skipped because who has the time?

Barnaby nudges my hand with his wet nose, and something in my chest cracks. Animals know. They always know when the pack is broken. He tilts his head, those brown eyes asking questions I can't answer yet.

I lace up my shoes, each loop a familiar prayer. My feet hit the pavement, and I think about how love doesn't die with drama. It dies in inches — in overlooked vitamins and untouched spinach, in runs that become escapes, in the silence between two people who promised forever and meant it but didn't know how to keep that promise alive.

The morning air tastes like endings. I pick up speed, my heart pounding against ribs that feel too fragile to hold this grief much longer. Behind me, in a house full of things that were supposed to mean something, a man I loved for seven years scrolls through his phone. And a dog waits for someone to come back to life.