Corporate Metabolism

The wilted spinach sat in my desk drawer, three days past its prime, much like my marriage. Marta had left me a month ago — 'you're married to your career, David, not to me' — and she wasn't wrong. I'd spent twelve years climbing the corporate pyramid, each promotion bringing me closer to something I couldn't name but chased anyway.

I'd become a zombie of my own making. Not the pop-culture kind that craved brains, but the office variety that processed spreadsheets and strategic initiatives until my soul had simply... evaporated. I woke at 5 AM, worked through lunch, collapsed at 9 PM. Weekends were for catching up.

Then came the baseball game.

My assistant Jenna had found a ticket in the lobby — 'some sort of team-building event,' she'd said, wrinkling her nose. 'You should go. You've been working on the Q3 projections for three weeks straight.' She was twenty-three, with spinach in her teeth and an optimism I found irritating.

The stadium was packed. I hadn't been to a game since my father took me when I was twelve. He'd died the following year, and somewhere between the funeral and my first entry-level position, I'd stopped living altogether.

The crack of the bat. The crowd's collective gasp. A home run arced through the floodlights, impossibly perfect, and for three seconds, something in my chest opened up. I cried, right there in section 204, surrounded by strangers who high-fived and spilled beer and felt things I'd forgotten how to feel.

Back at my desk, I looked at the wilted spinach. I'd been surviving on lean cuisine and ambition. The pyramid scheme I'd bought into wasn't just corporate — it was the promise that sacrifice would eventually feel worth it.

I typed my resignation letter at 2 AM. Two weeks later, I started volunteering at a community garden, teaching kids to grow vegetables, coaching a little league team. My salary was a fraction of what I'd earned, but for the first time in twelve years, I wasn't hungry.

Sometimes, now, I eat spinach straight from the garden, dirt still on the leaves. It tastes like something real.