text: Concessions, or something similar. That was how it began between them. Avoiding conflict, not wanting war. Bridging all the gaps. Until they couldn't. Now it was different. She had crossed a bridge to reach him and was telling him something. She was telling him now that they had to part. That they just weren’t like they used to be, they weren’t really together anymore, they weren’t really a couple. (If ‘couple’ ever really has a definition.) And they definitely were not in love now. Not that anybody had ever told them that or even tried to suggest it. Love is something very personal. That goes without saying. Still. It was something - their lack of love - that she had known for some time. Her eyes, her mouth, her everything knew it. She didn’t know how to argue it out loud, so she just said it, point-blank, like a person will fire a gun into the body of another without making a fuss. Not loudly, though, she aimed softly, perhaps at his heart, because she didn’t want to argue. And she detested loud noises, deep within what she knew was her spectrum. Colors in every shade imaginable. When she said it, her voice caressed no anger, pressed no sadness beneath the surface of the sounds, found no pain in what she was giving him. It was just a need, she explained - or tried to say - to not be together the way they had always been. She simply knew it was so - she explained - had been so for awhile, and so she had said it in the way it had needed to be said: simply, lightly, almost airily. It was all there was to say. It was the only way she knew how to do it. She was by no means a cruel person. However, there were things she knew, things she felt she was sure about, was certain were true, probably. That was why she told him what she did, the way she did. Do not think it didn't make her feel very sad, because it did. The truth was, the years had not been few, their letters and phone calls had been often and most of all, their intentions had been good, had been honest. It had not been a waste of time, all that time. It just wasn’t, not any longer. Not honest and so not good. It needed to be over, she had told herself before telling him. It was done now, in any event. She had finally set them free. Her thoughts, and them, the couple they had been. "We aren't, anymore." He heard her first, then he listened with all the amazement he had inside him to the words that had come out of her mouth like serpents or baby eels, tiny worms. He looked at each of them, there in the air, and he saw their sharpness, the edges she had by no means intended. Edges that were there despite their curling forms. Like moving swords. Not to be ignored. Then he really felt them, the words or worms, and asked why and cried. He cried dully, with no sharp edges of his own, even if he were craving to argue, to win the game, because it had to be that, it could not be an argument, just a ‘no more, adiós, see you somewhere.’ There could be no game between the air she spoke and the one he was hearing. "How did this happen to us?" It was all he could manage to say, from the depths where he was. The pool of dismay got deeper, but he made no effort to escape. He could not do battle. "I wish I knew." (Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. Have that wish. Or maybe she didn't care at all. It was hard to tell.) She had answered that way, her eyes dripping in the same way his were. She was calm, as if she had not severed their artery. She was not happy, nor were her words, which were tightly shrouded in silence. There were no swords. Only those words that refused to argue, only speaking to him as if he understood. "I don't understand." His words rang true, perhaps. He thought so, though. He hoped so, He did not, he could never, understand. He did not, however, doubt what she was saying, gently drizzling the words over him. He was drowning. She said then was she should have said before: there was someone else. Was saying that, not whispering, not (yet) crying. She appeared to be tearless, not needing to cry, her salt dried up and blown far away. There was nothing left in her words, maybe nothing left in her. Not for him, at least. "I don't understand." He hated himself (and her, a little) for repeating the words. Saying the same thing twice was changing nothing. He looked so sad as she watched, but neither was able to give birth to any other response. Then he drooped, like a flower bends forward in a vase after a week without roots. She nearly sucked her words back into her mouth, behind her teeth, swallowing them whole, but she didn't. He was looking down, to a place somewhere below his hands. He sensed she was looking away, knowing he would eventually look up, trying to find her eyes, her gaze, her lashes. He knew what color guilt had then: it was transparent. She had found her guilt, he thought, because she had shifted her shoulders and her head was turned toward the window. She now seemed to be talking to the blades of grass in the back yard. She would no longer walk there with him, because the glass split them off. Shattered glass. She had split them in half. Maybe that's the meaning of 'couple': when two halves happen, are born out of one. He knew she was right, however, and he knew something that was a hundred times worse: he knew that everything they had loved was over. If it weren't, she never would have said so. She was wishing now that she hadn’t been forced to say anything, not even the tiniest sound, but she had. The words were necessary. Silence would have been a lie, and lying would have killed her, eventually. It would have killed him before that. She owed it to him. There was something else, though. Despite what he'd said, his few words that were not a war, he had acted as if he’d known all along. He'd acted as if it were natural to hear all that sound - that minute - and yet remain as silent as a tomb, despite being split open by three words he was never supposed to hear: "There’s somebody else." Somebody else she was not supposed to know, or meet. Somebody else he knew, however. Somebody who had no right, but had taken it, and her. He did not know everything, though. She did not know everything, either. She only could say what she knew, which was simple and nonviolent: They were not, not any more. Which meant she was leaving. Yes, she would give him a chance to cry, to resist, to ply her with questions. She had thought he might do that, and said no more. She had said what she knew and she also knew she must be going. It was his turn to speak. He did not try to stop her. He did not give her permission to leave. He did not ask for explanations of any kind, because he knew all the answers. When he thought about it, he realized he knew who was on the other side of her words. It was a name he didn't want to hear and did not have to. He was now on the other side of her, and would stay there. She would leave, and he would think no more. To clarify: He would think no more about them, about the couple. That had died in battle, in a war of very few words. He would think of her, and avoid the bridge of the years they had spent as one. He needed her in his life; he just wouldn't have them as one, together. He didn't know everything. He didn't think she had made it all up. That the somebody else was somebody she had created and presented to him. He thought he would know who it was if that had been the case. He was certain he was not wrong. His tears, in a way, had been for nothing. If, in fact, they had been tears. They might have been simply the splashing of the pool and without salt, for all he knew. Or cared. He also wondered if any of it really mattered, if the words or swords had done any damage. He felt rather relieved when he waded out and knew they had not. He was still there and she was gone now. She was not needed. He was satisfied. He had not needed her. He had not understood when she told him, cut them in two, but he didn't care now. There was somebody else for her, or would be somebody else. He realized, relieved, that he had in fact gotten free. He felt no guilt about that. The truth was, he had somebody else, like she did (or had said she did). He felt nothing for her, for the one who had released them from their bondage. It was as if, exactly if, she had been able to read his mind. After all, they had spent so long together, she might have learned to do that. He had not. Learned to read her mind. She had lied, but he didn't know that. He had done a marvelous job of playing his part, of crying and then lying. He had lied, definitely. And he was pleased with himself. He, along with his Somebody, could now turn toward their life together, be a couple. It was time, because he had waited so long for this new moment. Too long. She, on the other hand, cried. Until she had nothing left to cry but a pool of salt. The one she had given him to set him free. Because she wouldn't have it, or him, any other way.