A Marriage in Winter

The chill had settled deep into the foundation of their marriage, much like the first frost that silences a garden. Eleanor watched her husband across the dinner table, a familiar stranger navigating a world she no longer seemed to inhabit. His conversations revolved around his work, his ambitions, his life – a life that had, somehow, quietly excluded her. The shared dreams they once nurtured had become fragile, brittle things, easily shattered by the unspoken distance that had grown between them. It wasn't a sudden storm that had brought them here, but a slow, creeping winter, an accumulation of small neglects that had frozen the warmth right out of their connection.

Days bled into weeks, marked by the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sounds of children playing, a soundtrack to Eleanor’s growing invisibility. She moved through their home like a ghost, her presence acknowledged only by the necessities of daily life – a prepared meal, clean clothes, a quiet house for him to retreat into. Her own thoughts, her own feelings, seemed to dissipate into the air before they could even form into words, lost in the vast, empty space that had opened up between her and the man she had married.