We’ve been married for twenty years, and yet it feels like only yesterday we made that long, uncomfortable eye contact in freshman biology. The moment was so awkward we both had to look away, and yet, almost magnetically, we still looked back and giggled. It’s been two decades on the dot since my brother officiated the wedding and we said “I do,” after exchanging vows and rings, and yet, waking up alone in our California king and tip-toeing down our steps into the morning-lit alleyway kitchen, there is nothing and no one to be found. I sit at the island in the boxer shorts you said you loved—the pair you noticed after our first dinner date—and I gush and wait for your arrival from wherever you’ve gone so early on your day off; and yet, when you open the french doors from the drive-in and glance my direction, you do it with so little affect I wonder if I’ve somehow turned into a glass pane myself.

“Happy anniversary,” I say, a little pitifully, and yet the pity is all mine.

I smile your way, the kind of smile that says, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience—whatever it may be”—and yet you still ghost me by on your way to the out-of-style plaid couch my grandparents gave us two decades ago. I figure you may think I had forgotten, so I grab the flowers from the spare room, the ones I ran out for the night before, presenting them to you like a dog with a bird; and yet, you greet me as you would the broken-down lawn mower, stuffed in the recesses of our garage, we’ve been too lazy to scrap for two summers now. I sit in the chair adjacent to your spot on the couch: an attempt to share your presence in a less distracting way, and yet I still feel as though I’ve grown to the size of an elephant before moseying into our living room.

“Are you happy?” I ask - I don’t know why - and yet I may have been more startled by the question than you.

You meet my eyes as you had those years ago, though now a shared awkwardness is dwarfed by a predatory gaze, and yet I continue with pathetic jazz hands: “twenty years!”

“... and yet?”

And yet?