Empty In Between
She can practically hear the chaos behind his silence.
She can practically feel his tongue behind his teeth, taste the blood of his decision on the velvety texture. The darkness is more suffocating than she would like it to be. Her eyes are perfectly clear and wide open and she stares at the ceiling in the darkness, wind rolling on her body like laughter, or tears. Like nothing at all, cold and impersonal.
She breathes through her mouth, aware and calculated as she does.
She asked him what he wants, before, and he didn't give her a straightforward answer because maybe he doesn't have one. She wanted to say something that would make him love her again, or at least explain when he had fallen out and crashed into little pieces her love wasn't able to piece together. She wonders if she is the one who made him vulnerable enough to fall apart.
She wants to fall apart, too.
She listens to his breaths, obscured by the rain and the loud whistle of the wind, the rattle of leaves as it dances through the trees. She listens to the clamor in the calm. His body is stiff on their soft mattress, rigid and frigid and colder than the winter air on her naked skin. She doesn't need to look at him to know that he's not looking at her.
She doesn't know when she became used to feeling alone with him right next to her.
She resents him for spoiling their happiness with his lack thereof. He calls her Mrs. Ziegler in front of the people he works with, and she has no idea who he's referring to, because he never looks directly at her when he does. If it is true that opposites attract then he should complete her, not drag her down with him. If it is true that they are opposites, she should attract him.
She remembers vaguely not feeling empty inside.
She tries to avoid the thought that it's all emendable between them when it's not. She tries to convince herself that giving him children won't automatically resuscitate their marriage. She leans into their mattress, soaked with their desperate, idealistic sex from the days when nothing else would do. Her nails scrape the bed like they would his back, more viciously than she intends to.
She's more exposed to oblivion now than she has been to him in so many months.
She allows the void to eat her out like a lover and seep into her like life. She closes her eyes. She breathes in and out, measured breaths. The wind hits their home, hers and Toby's, foolish and brave enough to try and break down their solid walls. She is invisible and invincible, resigned and whole, just for a moment.
Just for a moment, she gives up on them entirely and lets go.