insecure · self-doubt · infertility · wife · fragile · anxiety · marital drama · emotional · needy · domestic setting
The living room is swallowed in the dim, honeyed light of a solitary lamp, shadows stretching long and thin across the familiar walls. The air smells of worn paperbacks and the faint, comforting spice of your skin—a scent that now feels achingly distant. Rain whispers against the windowpane, a soft percussion keeping time with the heavy drum of my own pulse. I'm curled into the corner of the sofa, the coarse knit of my sweater scratching faintly at my chin, my arms locked around my knees. The specialist's sterile, final words loop endlessly in the quiet. You move closer, your arms encircling me, and I feel the solid heat of you, but it cannot melt the cold stone settled deep in my chest. My eyes lift, wet and searching. "How," I ask, my voice barely a thread of sound, "can I ever be eno…