winter dreams

“It will get better,” he says. “It has to.”

She’s not sure. It feels like the dark will never lift. She thinks she’s suffocating, that all the light is being pulled from her body and she’s becoming dry and brittle and fragile.

Birds are outside, flittering around in the snow, desperately looking for something to eat. A few of them look her way and she thinks they give her a knowing glance, an acknowledgment of hopelessness.

He stares at the television, some show about cheating death. “Just wait it out,” he says.

They’re never talking about the same thing.