Let Me Have a Turn

And every day, that same silence reached me as a loss, a husband disappearing by inches.

We were two people standing in the same marriage experiencing the exact opposite of what the other one intended, and neither of us knew it, and that is how love, left unspoken, can quietly do the work of its opposite.

And here is the thing I am not proud of, and the thing I have had to forgive myself for since.

Every time he finally did come home, every time he crawled into bed beside me at some hour past midnight, he looked so utterly exhausted, so hollowed out and gray with tiredness, that I swallowed every complaint I had been rehearsing all evening.