What We Swallow

The morning after he left, I found the vitamin bottle on his nightstand—orange-labeled B-complex, the kind he swore made him "less lethal" before coffee. I'd bought them as a peace offering during our sixth month, when our arguments had started feeling like rehearsals for a breakup we both saw coming but refused to script.

That was the week lightning struck the oak tree in our yard, splitting it down the middle while we sat at breakfast, neither speaking, both pretending not to notice how the silence had grown heavier than the storm outside. He'd watched the bark rain down on the patio and said, "Nature's violent as hell, isn't it?" I'd stirred my cold coffee and thought, So are we.

His dog, Buster, had slept through it all—thunder, tree-splitting, the quiet demolition of our marriage. That dog loved him with the blind devotion of a creature who'd never been let down. My cat, Luna, had spent those final months watching me from doorframes, yellow eyes knowing what I wouldn't admit: I was staying for the same reason Buster stayed—habit mistaken for loyalty.

I took the vitamin bottle to the kitchen. Three years of swallowing things I didn't want: his indifference, his criticism, the way he made me feel demanding for asking to be seen. The morning he walked out, he didn't take anything but his clothes and Buster's leash. Luna watched from the counter as I poured the pills into the trash.

Lightning flashed through the kitchen window—real storm this time, approaching from the west. I stood in the sudden illumination, no longer wondering if he'd come back. Some deficiencies can't be corrected with supplements. Some hungers aren't about what you're missing, but what you've finally stopped swallowing.