Therapy Bits

"You misconstrue everything!", Jody said, frustration written all over her face.
The kitchen clock clicked like a judge’s gavel, measuring silences instead of minutes. Sam watched steam curl from his mug and tried to remember when listening had become an accusation. He wanted to explain the email, the missed call, the half truths that weren’t lies so much as unfinished sentences. Instead, he nodded, a small motion that felt like surrender.

Jody paced. Her socks whispered against tile, back and forth, back and forth. “You never hear what I’m saying,” she said, softer now, as if volume could bruise. Sam heard that. He heard the way her voice cracked on never, the way hope hid inside anger like a note folded too tight to read.

On the counter sat a postcard from the coast, sun bleached and hopeful. They had bought it years ago, planning a trip they never took, promising they would. Sam picked it up. The ocean was a blue he didn’t recognize anymore.

“I hear you,” he said, and this time he meant the words, not their echo. He placed the card between them. “I just learned the language late.”

Jody stopped pacing. The clock kept clicking, but slower now, as if relieved. She looked at the postcard, then at him, and laughed once, a sound surprised to exist. “Then start talking,” she said.

Sam took a breath, deep as tidewater, and began with the truth he had been afraid of misusing. At last, meaning found room.

FOWC With Fandango — Misconstrue – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies