What We Could Not Keep

Martha stood at the kitchen counter, crushing the pills into powder. Three of them now, up from one last month. The vitamin D was his doctor's optimistic suggestion, as if sunshine could be condensed into tablets and swallowed like faith.

The house was too quiet. In the bathroom sink, she heard water running—him trying to wash away the morning sickness that came with the chemotherapy, as though he could scrub the poison from his skin. She used to love watching him shower, the water sliding down his back, his ease in his own body. Now he came out wrapped in towels like armor.

"Spinach again?" He stood in the doorway, thinner every day, his old t-shirt hanging off shoulders that used to be strong enough to carry her to bed.

"It's what you need." She stirred the wilted greens with wooden numbness. The smell used to make her think of Sunday mornings, eggs florentine, his hand on her thigh. Now it just smelled like hospital cafeterias.

"I hate what this has turned us into." His voice cracked. "All this measuring and counting. Every fucking meal becomes a medical intervention. I miss when food was just food."

She wanted to scream that she missed it too—missed when the most difficult thing between them was deciding where to go for dinner, missed when their bodies were sources of pleasure rather than problems to be solved. Instead she said, "Eat. Please."

He sat, picked at the spinach on his plate. Outside, rain began to fall, water drumming against the windows like time running out.

"Remember that beach in Portugal?" he asked suddenly. "How we swam out too far and panicked, then laughed because the water was only waist deep?"

"I remember."

"I keep thinking about that. How things seem deeper than they are. How fear makes us drown in shallow water."

She watched him swallow the greens, forced down like medicine. The vitamins stood in their orange bottles on the counter, their promises emptier every day. What good was health if you couldn't share it with the person who made being alive feel like something worth celebrating?

"We're still here," she said, reaching across the table to cover his hand with hers. "Whatever that means."

He turned his palm up, interlaced their fingers. His skin was paper-thin now, fragile, but his grip was still firm. The spinach grew cold on their plates. The rain kept falling. And somewhere in the house, a clock kept measuring out the time they had left, each second a small cruelty, each touch a small grace.