The night we stopped keeping score

For two years we kept a ledger neither of us admitted to. His evening out, then mine. A careful accounting of who was owed what, as if desire could be reconciled like a bank statement.

The night it broke was ordinary. We were doing dishes. He said, plainly, that he did not want to be even. He wanted to be generous. And something in the arithmetic dissolved.

What follows is not advice. It is only what happened when we stopped keeping score, and what we found on the other side of the math.