The argument started the way so many do, over something small that somehow found every tender spot between us.
By the time the house went quiet, our words had stacked up into something heavier than either of us meant to carry, and we agreed to sleep in separate rooms just to breathe again. In the guest room,
I lay in the dark with my eyes closed, waiting for sleep to rescue me, but my mind kept replaying every sharp phrase and every pause where I could have chosen softer.
The silence felt loud, like the whole house was listening, and all I could think about was how quickly love can start to feel like distance when pride gets involved.
Sometime later, the door creaked open. He stepped in quietly, moving like he was trying not to disturb the air itself, and I stayed still, pretending to sleep because
I didn’t know what I was ready for. He reached for something near the dresser, then hesitated, and I felt the mattress dip as he leaned closer to the bed. His breath warmed the side of
my face, and in the smallest voice, he whispered, “I wish…” then stopped. The unfinished words hung there, delicate and unsure, and for a moment it felt
like he was standing at the edge of something important, something he didn’t know how to cross. Then he left just as quietly, closing the door with the care of someone trying not to make a mistake.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, listening to the quiet return, louder now because it held questions. I turned his half sentence over in my mind until it felt worn:
I wish what, exactly. I wish we hadn’t fought, I wish I’d handled it differently, I wish you knew I still love you, I wish I could reach you without starting another fire. The not knowing ached,
but beneath it was something gentler, a thin thread of tenderness that hadn’t snapped even after the argument did its best. It reminded me that sometimes what stays unsaid is not empty at all, it’s just fragile, waiting for a safer moment to be spoken.
In the morning we sat at the kitchen table with coffee between us, both of us moving carefully as if the night’s tension might still be breakable glass.
We didn’t rush into the argument, we talked about the day ahead, errands, the weather, the smallest ordinary things that stitch people back together when they don’t know where to start.
Then he looked up and finally finished it, his voice steady but honest: “I wish we could talk without hurting each other.” I smiled because the sentence landed exactly where it needed to, not as a grand apology,
but as a shared truth. We didn’t fix everything in one conversation, but we chose the only thing that actually matters in the long run, to try again, to listen better, to soften our edges, and to keep choosing each other even when it’s hard.
