Kitchen table Stories

After fifteen years of marriage, you feel like a stranger to me. I watch you lift a wineglass to your lips during dinner, a gesture you've made countless times in my presence, yet it's now utterly unfamiliar. Because you are. When did it start? Months ago? Years, maybe? I can't pinpoint the exact moment you began drifting away. We don't fight about sex or money; we have plenty of both. There's no obvious wedge between us....

I open the door still reeking of damp hair, yesterday’s regret, and the faint hope that pizza might heal spiritual wounds. What I get is him. He’s standing there, same clothes, same stare, holding a coffee like it’s a trigger and he’s just waiting for me to pull it. “No sugar,” he says, like that’s all the context I need. It’s not. I feel it in my ribs—that click, that shift. The part of my brain that usually screams bad...

The sun was relentless. It beat down on Georgia’s creamy skin like a hot hand pressing against her shoulders, her chest, the back of her neck. Even in the shade of the old magnolia tree, the air was thick, soupy—more steam than breeze. Her raven-black hair clung to the sides of her face in damp waves as she sank her trowel into the garden bed one last time, exhaling a small grunt as she tugged a stubborn weed free. Her ta...