In her dreams, he was elusive and distant, staring at her with grave eyes. How she longed for his words, his words, once so sweet but now – when he did bother to open his mouth – unruly and hardened. But he said nothing, in her dreams, while she murmured something over and over again, inaudible to them both. Even she didn’t know their contents or intent.

Her dreams were her reality’s inverse. During her waking hours it was she who refused to speak, drifting through the long, masculine corridors of their home like a ghost ship. Her last words to him, spat from the foyer on her way to exercise class: “It is what it is.”

It was one of her favorite sayings. It made him cringe; he considered that turn of phrase a worthless tautology. In the days since she decided to stop speaking (thirteen and counting), he gradually forgot why she said that anyway.

He still tried, mildly and with condescension, to engage her in conversation. But to no real end. He, too, dreamed. He dreamed not of her words, or even his, but rather of an implicitly understood and forever sweet silence that needed no words at all.