Chlorine and Silence

The pool below her balcony gleamed like a fractured sapphire, its surface disturbed only by the lone swimmer doing laps in that rhythmic, desperate way people do when they're trying to outpace their thoughts. Elena watched from the fourth floor, her iPhone clutched in her hand like a talisman that had lost its power. No new messages. The screen illuminated her face in the darkened room, casting ghostly shadows under eyes that hadn't slept properly since the breakup.

She'd brought the vitamins with her—organized in a plastic pill case, Monday through Sunday—a small attempt to maintain some semblance of self-care even as her life dissolved around her. Vitamin D for the mood swings, B-complex for energy, magnesium for sleep. The irony wasn't lost on her: she was meticulously maintaining a body she barely recognized anymore, a vessel that had held someone else's love for seven years and now felt hollowed out.

A cat meowed somewhere in the parking lot below, its cry piercing and lonely. Elena thought of Mochi, her cat back in Seattle, currently being cared for by her sister. She wondered if the cat missed her, or if animals were better than humans at moving on, at accepting absence as just another fact of existence.

The swimmer in the pool stopped moving, treading water in the center. Elena checked her phone again. Still nothing. She'd told herself she came to Palm Springs for the yoga retreat, for the wellness workshops, but really she'd come because she couldn't bear waking up in their bed anymore. Couldn't reach across the mattress and find empty sheets.

She swallowed her vitamins dry, the bitter pills catching in her throat. The swimmer climbed out of the pool, dripping and solitary, and for a moment, Elena saw herself reflected in that movement—the way we all keep swimming even when we've forgotten where we're headed. The cat meowed again, and she finally let herself cry, the sound raw and ugly in the expensive hotel room, her phone darkening as the night wore on.