We slept in the same bed for ten years without ever touching each other. Everyone else thought our marriage was over, but the truth hurt more. Some wounds can be reopened with just a touch.

So did I.

Our fingers barely brushed.
It wasn’t an embrace.
It wasn’t passion.
It was permission.

Today, we still sleep in the same bed.
Sometimes there is still distance.
Sometimes there isn’t.

Mateo remains between us.
Not as a shadow that divides, but as a memory that aches… yet no longer paralyzes.

I learned something I never imagined:

There are marriages that don’t break with shouting,
but with silences that last too long.

And there are loves that don’t die,
they simply grow still, waiting for someone brave enough to reach out again.

Night settled over the house once more like a heavy blanket, but it was no longer the same silence. For years, that quiet had been a wall between them: one bed, two motionless bodies, an invisible space where no touch ever crossed. Not from lack of love, but from fear. Fear of breaking what little remained.