Electric Currents

The pool was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly what I needed. I'd been swimming laps for forty minutes, my body moving through the water while my mind replayed the dinner conversation that had ended my marriage. Or maybe it had ended years ago, and we'd just been too cowardly to pronounce it dead.

My iPhone sat on a pool chair, its screen lighting up periodically with texts I couldn't bring myself to answer. Sarah's messages had shifted from confusion to anger to something worse—pity. I felt like a zombie going through the motions of a life I no longer recognized, teaching architecture students about spaces and structures while my own life collapsed around me.

Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the empty pool deck in stark flashes. I should get out—the storm was moving closer, and swimming during a lightning storm was exactly the kind of reckless decision that made Sarah say I was stuck in perpetual adolescence. But I couldn't make myself move.

Instead, I thought about the dinner. Sarah had made salmon with spinach, something green and healthy and intentional. She'd been trying so hard, toward the end. Creating rituals. Building meaning. I'd pushed the spinach around my plate, suddenly unable to swallow another bite of effort, another mouthful of pretending.

"You're not even here anymore," she'd said, and she was right. I'd been ghost long before the conversation started.

Another flash of lightning, closer now. The water seemed to hum with electricity. For a moment, I wanted it to strike—wanted the shock of it, the clarity that only comes when something fundamental is destroyed. Wanted to be forced to rebuild from the scorched earth instead of this slow, suffocating rot.

The rain started, warm drops hitting the pool surface around me. I realized I was crying, finally crying, and the tears felt different than they had in months—real instead of performative. I swam to the edge and pulled myself out, water streaming from my skin like I was being born again.

I picked up my phone, saw Sarah's latest message: I'm staying at Maya's. Take care of yourself.

I stood there as the storm broke around me, not a zombie anymore, not quite alive either. Just caught in the electric space between endings and beginnings, holding the device that had connected and disconnected us in equal measure. The spinach had been perfect. She had been perfect. And I had been nowhere at all.