The Silence of Separation

"What is so unsettling about all of this?" she asked him.

"Why are you assuming there is something left to settle?" he said.

"Is there not?  Your boxes are over there and mine are here," she said.  "We have so much to do."

"Or we could just buy lighter fluid and set it all on fire?" he asked her, hoping for a response that would show any semblance of the way she used to feel about him.

"Yes, Noah, let's do that.  Let's just all be pyromaniacs like when we were in college.  You're right.  That solves everything," she answered sarcastically.

"Well, why not?  Memories of this aren't going to do either of us any favors," he pointed out.

"Would you rather it be that we didn't exist?  That's what this feels like.  Like you want to erase us," she said quietly.  He could see that she was slowly stirring with anger and she would only ask questions like this if she still loved him.

"I don't want to erase us, Sharon.  I just want to move on."

"From me?  From us?" she said.

"Do you love me, Sharon?"

The silence in the room was sad and unlike anything she had ever heard before.  She thought to herself, "How can you hear silence?" and then she said it aloud.

"Can you hear that?" she asked.

"Sharon."

"Can you hear that?" she repeated.

"Hear what?" he acquiesced, knowing full well she had changed the subject, as she had done many times before.

"Nothing," she said.  "Absolutely nothing."

Noah tried to listen to see if he could hear the silence she was referring to and he, too, wondered whether it was possible to hear such nonsense.

"It's been like this for so long that we don't even notice it," Sharon pointed out.

"Notice what?" Noah said.

"That we have nothing to say to each other anymore," she answered with a tear streaming down her cheek.

Noah was perplexed by this observation.  She was in pain and he wanted so badly to believe in them and believe in his ability to expunge her discomfort, but it had been so long since they were on the same team.

"Of course I still love you," she admitted.  "Remember when you used to tell me I was a loud talker?"

Noah smiled at Sharon and nodded at this thought.  She was referring to her noises when they made love in their first apartment and they were afraid of waking the elderly neighbors.  And now, they, too, were older and perhaps more clouded in their affinities for promising recollections.

But this memory was not lost on her and made her smile more than she thought possible.