My Wife Is Upstairs Serena Hill May 2026

My wife is upstairs, Serena Hill.

My wife is upstairs, Serena Hill.

I sit on the couch. The coffee cup beside me is cold. The novel in my lap hasn’t turned a page in an hour. This is the geography of our marriage now—vertical, stratified. She occupies the altitude of grief, and I occupy the basement of patience. There is a staircase between us. Seventeen steps. Each one a negotiation. my wife is upstairs serena hill

I don’t say that to explain where she is. I say it to explain why I am down here, in the dark of the living room, watching the grandfather clock’s pendulum tick away the seconds she no longer marks. I say it because her name—the one she took from me, the one that still sits on our mail—has become a kind of spell. A warning label for the rest of the house. My wife is upstairs, Serena Hill

Not tonight. Not tomorrow, probably. But she is there . And while she is there—breathing, existing, holding onto the far side of the bed with her back to the door—I am still married. Still here. Still the man who says her full name in the empty kitchen as if it might call her back. The coffee cup beside me is cold