Drowning in Yesterday

The old baseball cap still smelled like him—sweat and Old Spice and Sunday afternoons. Elena ran her fingers through her hair, now streaked with gray at thirty-five, and wondered why she'd kept it all these years.

The pool in her backyard reflected the bruised purple of twilight, its surface broken only by the occasional leaf spiraling down. She'd promised herself she'd fill it in after David left, but there it was, a crystalline memory she couldn't quite bury.

"You're still thinking about him," her sister had said over lunch yesterday, pushing a salad across the table. "Eat something. You're fading away."

Elena had poked at her spinach, remembering how David used to make fun of her healthy choices. "Life's too short for rabbit food," he'd say, reaching across the table to steal a forkful.

Now she stood at the pool's edge, baseball cap in hand, remembering the last time she'd seen him alive. They'd argued about something stupid—money, always money—and he'd stormed out to his brother's place. The phone call came three days later. Heart attack, they said. Forty-two years old.

She placed his hat on the diving board, a final goodbye she'd been putting off for months. The water rippled in the breeze, distorting her reflection. In that moment, she understood something about grief—it wasn't a linear path forward. It was this pool, deep and unmoving, holding everything she couldn't say.

Elena turned away from the water and walked back toward the house, leaving the hat behind. Some things, she decided, weren't meant to be carried forever.