Dead Loss

The Monday morning subway ride, and Marcus felt himself becoming a **zombie**—not the flesh-eating kind, but the corporate variety, the sort that shuffles through cubicles with eyes glazed over, responding to emails with automatic reflexes while the soul quietly packs its bags. He'd been feeling dead inside since Elena left three weeks ago.

His **iPhone** buzzed in his pocket. Her again. The texts had been coming less frequently, but each one landed like a small explosion in his chest: "Left my blue **hat** at your place. Can I come by?" He stared at the message, thumbs hovering. The hat was just a hat, except it wasn't. It was the baseball cap she'd worn to every game he'd played in their Wednesday night league. The cap that smelled like her shampoo and summer evenings and the way she'd cheered when he finally hit a double after a month of strikeouts.

"You alive in there, Marcus?"

He jumped. Sarah from accounting stood beside his desk, holding two coffees. "You've been staring at that spreadsheet for an hour without blinking. You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Just tired," he said. "It's the merger."

"Bullshit." She set a cup on his desk. "It's the **baseball** league, isn't it? You haven't been back since she left. The team's asking about you."

Marcus felt something crack open in his chest. "I can't play without her there, Sarah. Every position on the field reminds me of something. The dugout where she'd wait with my glove. The spot in right field where she'd wave whenever I looked over. I'm hollowed out."

"So what? You stay hollow forever?" Sarah's voice softened. "Grief isn't about staying stuck. It's about learning to carry it differently."

His phone buzzed again. "I'm coming over at 7. Please be there."

That night, Marcus sat on his couch, the blue hat in his hands. When Elena knocked, he opened the door, and for a long moment they just looked at each other. She didn't ask for the hat back. She stepped inside, closed the door, and said, "I missed you. I miss us."

The zombie inside him stirred, opened its eyes, and began to remember what it felt like to be alive.