Dead Things Floating

Margaret sat at the edge of the apartment complex pool at 3 AM, her bare legs dangling in the chlorinated water. The divorce had been final for exactly three weeks, and she'd stopped sleeping somewhere around week two.

Her iPhone lit up beside her—David again. He wanted to know if she'd signed the papers for the house sale. She silenced it, watched the screen flicker and die. The device felt like a tether to a life she no longer wanted.

A moth skimmed the water's surface, struggling. Margaret watched it with the detached fascination of someone who'd forgotten how to care about anything at all. She felt like a zombie these days, moving through her job as a paralegal, her apartment, her grocery runs—performing the motions of living without the substance of it.

Her mother had called yesterday, worried. "You need to eat something, Maggie. You're wasting away."

She'd gone to the grocery store on autopilot and bought spinach. It sat in her refrigerator now, wilting, just like everything else.

The pool lights flickered—blue, then green, then nothing. In the sudden darkness, Margaret slid into the water. It was shockingly cold, and for a moment she felt something besides this hollow ache. She floated on her back, staring up at the few stars visible through the city's light pollution.

Her phone buzzed again on the concrete. One single vibration against the silence.

Margaret sank beneath the surface, held her breath until her lungs burned. When she broke the surface, gasping, she realized she was crying. Not quiet tears, but the ugly kind—the kind that meant something was finally breaking open.

She pulled herself from the pool, dripping and shivering, and grabbed her phone. Not to call David back. She opened the notes app and typed three words: I am alive.

The spinach would keep for tomorrow. Tonight, she would just exist.