Beneath the Surface

Elara stood at the kitchen counter at 6 AM, staring at the amber prescription bottle. The **vitamin** D supplements sat next to her wedding ring in a ceramic bowl she'd bought on their honeymoon in Greece. She hadn't taken it off yet. Couldn't. Three months since David left, and still her finger felt swollen with the ghost of a commitment that no longer existed.

She swallowed the pill dry, ignoring the glass of **water** she'd poured. The routine was all she had now—vitamins at dawn, gym by seven, work by nine. Her colleagues had stopped asking how she was doing somewhere around week six. Their glances held that peculiar blend of pity and relief that it wasn't them.

The pool at the Y was empty except for one elderly man doing laps with agonizing slowness. Elara lowered herself into the cool water, her swimsuit feeling too tight across ribs that had grown sharper these past months. She wasn't here to exercise. She was here because **swimming** was the only time her brain went quiet. No replaying conversations. No analyzing what she'd missed. Just the rhythmic cutting through water, the bubbles streaming from her mouth like tiny prayers.

The old man paused at the wall, his pale skin translucent in the harsh fluorescent light. "You're too young to look that sad," he said, not unkindly.

Elara treaded **water**, surprised by the sting of tears that mixed with the chlorine. "I'm not sad. I'm just... existing."

He nodded once. "That's the hardest part, isn't it?" And then he pushed off the wall, leaving her there with the ripples spreading outward like her own unhurried dissolution.

She climbed out of the pool an hour later, her body exhausted but her mind crystalline for the first time in months. The **vitamin** bottle would be waiting tomorrow. The water would be here. And she would keep swimming through the days until eventually, somehow, she learned to float again.