Chlorine and Chlorophyll

Marie sat at the kitchen island, staring at the plastic container of wilted spinach like it held the answers to her three-year marriage. Mark was at the gym again—his sixth visit this week. The new routine had started two months ago, after she found the texts.

"I'm just trying to be better," he'd said, but the vitamins on the counter told a different story. Performance enhancers, testosterone boosters, things with names that sounded like science fiction. He was bulking up, transforming into someone she didn't recognize. Someone who looked in the mirror and saw a masterpiece, not a man abandoning his wife.

She remembered their honeymoon in Malta, how they'd spent hours swimming in the Mediterranean, weightless and salt-crusted, making promises that dissolved faster than sugar in warm water. Now she felt like she was drowning in the shallow end of their own life.

"You're overthinking," her sister had said over coffee yesterday. "Men hit their thirties and panic. It's a midlife crisis, not an affair."

But Marie knew better. She'd seen the way his trainer looked at him—like he was something carved from marble, something to be displayed and worshiped. The bull in the china shop of their marriage, shattering everything without noticing the noise.

The spinach blurred as tears finally came. She was thirty-two, too young for this exhaustion, too old to start over. Again.

Her phone buzzed. A photo from Mark: his biceps, glistening with sweat, captioned "Gains." No mention of dinner. No "I love you." Just proof that he existed somewhere else, somewhere that didn't include her.

Marie stood up and walked to the sink. She watched the spinach circle down the drain, vibrant green fading to nothing in the darkness. Healthy choices. Strong choices. The choices that destroyed you while everyone praised your discipline.

She opened the cabinet and reached for the wine instead. The vitamins could wait. So could Mark. Tonight, she would just float.

The pool in their complex would be empty this time of night. She could swim until her arms burned, until she was too exhausted to feel anything at all. Until she was just a body moving through water, not a wife waiting for a husband who'd already left.