Year One
Him:
When her voice rises, something in me goes underground. I don’t mean to leave—I’m still sitting here, aren’t I? But inside, I’m walking away from something that feels like fire. My father taught me this: when the heat comes, you become stone. Stone doesn’t burn. I’m protecting us both, can’t she see that? If I stay quiet, the storm will pass. It always does.
Her:
His eyes go flat mid-sentence, like someone turned off a light inside him. I’m still talking but he’s gone—vanished into some room I can’t enter. The panic is immediate, cellular. Everyone leaves eventually; I’ve always known this. So I speak louder, reach harder, try to pull him back before he disappears completely. If I can just make him feel what I’m feeling, he’ll stay. He has to stay.
Year Two
Him:
She says I abandon her, but I’m here every day. I go to work, come home, sit across from her at dinner. How is that abandonment? When she cries, I feel something breaking in my chest, but if I reach for her, I’ll say the wrong thing. I always do. Better to be still. Better to wait it out. She’ll calm down if I just don’t make it worse.
Her:
I used to cry when he went silent. Now I hear my voice getting sharp, cutting. I don’t recognize the edge in it, but I can’t seem to stop. His calm makes me crazy—it’s not peace, it’s absence. I’m screaming into a void. Sometimes I say things just to see if he’ll flinch, just to know he’s still in there somewhere. When did I become this person who wants to hurt him?
Year Four
Him:
She calls me a coward now. Maybe she’s right. It’s easier not to fight, easier to let her words hit the wall I’ve built. Inside the wall, I keep a list of her cruelties, evidence for the case I’m building. See? This is why I stay quiet. This is what happens when I don’t. I’m not the problem here. I’m the one being reasonable, the one keeping my composure while she falls apart.
Her:
I’ve started saying things I can’t take back. His silence has become a kind of violence—this refusal to meet me, to fight with me, to care enough to be angry. I mock him and feel sick afterward, but also justified. He made me this way. His absence carved out this bitter, ugly space inside me. I used to beg. Now I wound. It’s the only language that feels honest anymore.
Year Six
Him:
I’ve perfected the art of being here without being present. I can have entire conversations while thinking about nothing. She doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Sometimes I catch myself mid-sentence, not knowing what I just said. The numbness is spreading. It used to be just around her; now it’s everywhere. I’m cold all the way through.
Her:
I dream about leaving, but where would I go? And to what? I’d just take this rage with me, this person I’ve become. I catch my reflection sometimes and don’t recognize the hardness around my mouth. When did I start looking like this? When did I start enjoying the small cuts I can make with just the right word, the perfectly timed sigh?
Year Eight
Him:
We had people over last night and she told a story about me forgetting our anniversary. Everyone laughed. She made me the punchline again, and I smiled like it was fine, like I’m in on the joke. But inside, something small and soft finally died. I think it was hope. I think it was the last piece of me that thought we could find our way back.
Her:
I humiliated him in front of our friends and felt nothing. That should scare me more than it does. There was a time I would have protected him, would have made him look good to others. Now I want witnesses to his inadequacy, proof that I’m not crazy for feeling so alone. But their laughter felt hollow. No one won. We just both lost in public.
Year Ten
Him:
I can’t remember the last time I told her anything true. I narrate my day in facts—traffic, meetings, weather. The real things, the fears and wants and moments of beauty, I keep those locked away. It’s safer there. She’d only use them against me anyway. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe I don’t know her anymore. Maybe I never did.
Her:
This morning he poured coffee without asking if I wanted any. Such a small thing, but it cracked something open in me. We used to know each other’s rhythms. Now we’re strangers performing a marriage for an audience of no one. I wanted to say something kind, to reach across the table and touch his hand. But my throat closed around the words. It’s been so long since I was gentle. I don’t know if I remember how.
Year Ten (continued)
Him:
Late last night, she cried in the bathroom with the door almost closed. I stood in the hallway, my hand raised to knock, and couldn’t do it. What would I say? How would I cross ten years of silence in a single moment? I stood there until my arm ached, then walked back to bed. I’m a coward. She’s right about that. I’ve always been a coward.
Her:
I heard him outside the door. I could see his shadow in the crack of light. For a moment, I thought he might come in, that we might finally break open this terrible thing we’ve built. But his footsteps retreated and I felt something like relief mixed with devastating loss. We’re both so scared. We’ve hurt each other into separate corners and now we’re too afraid to crawl out.
Year Eleven
Him:
I saw a photo from our wedding today. We looked so young, so certain. I was terrified that day, but also sure—sure of her, sure of us. When did that man become this one? When did I trade feeling for safety? The numbness I thought was armor has become my skin. I don’t know how to shed it. I don’t know if there’s anything left underneath.
Her:
I found myself wanting to tell him something today—something small, something that made me laugh. But the instinct died before I could speak. We don’t do that anymore. We don’t share. The cruelty I built to protect myself from his absence has become a wall I can’t dismantle. I’m trapped on one side, he’s trapped on the other, and the wall is made of everything we didn’t say when we still could have.
Year Eleven (late)
Him:
What if I tried? What if I just opened my mouth and let the truth spill out—messy and inadequate and ten years too late? What if I told her I’m terrified? That I’ve been terrified this entire time? That I don’t know how to be close without feeling like I’m being torn apart? But the words stick. They’ve been frozen so long I don’t know if they’ll ever thaw.
Her:
What if I stopped? What if I put down these sharp words I’ve been carrying like weapons? What if I let myself be soft again, even though soft means vulnerable and vulnerable means he could leave me empty-handed like everyone else? But the softness feels dangerous now, like taking off armor in the middle of battle. What if I soften and he stays silent? What if I crack myself open and there’s still nothing on the other side?
Year Twelve
Both:
We’re standing in the kitchen. Light slants through the window the way it did that first morning in this house, when everything still felt possible. Our eyes meet accidentally. For half a second, I see something—fear maybe, or recognition. The same face I fell in love with, older now, worn by the years we’ve survived and the ways we’ve failed.
I could speak. I could reach out. I could let this moment break us open.
Or I could let it pass, let us return to our separate silences, our familiar cold.
The choice hangs between us like a breath.
Neither of us knows what comes next.