I Text Him Two Words

Posted September 1Sep 1

“Good morning.”

That’s the signal.

Not a demand. Not a routine. A reaching out.

And every time, without fail, I hear him coming down the hall just moments later.

The mug clicks gently against the nightstand.

His hand finds me, sometimes just a touch, sometimes a sweep.

Then he walks away.

Leaving me in the dark, with coffee and quiet.

He doesn’t know this, but there’s a flicker of surprise every morning when I reach for the cup. For a half-second, I get to wonder which one he picked. Did he choose the mug with the chipped lip? The heavy one with the wide mouth I like when I’m overwhelmed?

The ridged green one I always forget I love until I’m holding it again?

He decides.

And sure, I pre-load the pot the night before. That’s my part. But sometimes I forget. Sometimes I don’t have it in me. He’s never mentioned it. Never made it a thing.

That matters more than I can say.

Because all day long, I am the answer-finder. The meal-prepper. The email-writer. The therapist. The calendar. The emotional thermostat for everyone around me.

And in that small moment..early, quiet, unseen, he becomes the one who thinks for me, in a “I love you and I’ll make this one thing easier” way.

We don’t talk about this part of marriage enough.

The way it feels when someone meets you in the middle of your ordinary exhaustion and says,

“I’ve got this part.”

So yes.

He brings me coffee.

And it’s never just coffee.

It’s the reason I can carry everything else.

Image generated using AI. Prompt designed by the author. Created with OpenAI’s DALL·E.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.