Learning to Breathe Underwater

I'd been **swimming** laps for forty-five minutes when the lifeguard blew the whistle. Another three minutes, I thought. Just three more. But I surfaced, gasping, water streaming down my face like the tears I hadn't been able to shed for weeks.

Back at the apartment, the silence was worse than I remembered. Sara's keys were gone from the hook, but her **vitamin** supplements still crowded the counter — organized, color-coded, a testament to a life she'd planned to live here. I knocked the bottle into the trash and felt like I was erasing her.

The **baseball** ticket from July curled on the fridge, held by a magnet she'd bought in Seattle. We'd sat through extra innings, both of us pretending everything was fine. The heat had been suffocating. I'd asked if she was happy. She'd said, "I'm trying to be." I should have heard what she meant.

Yesterday, I'd driven past the high school track where the **running** team practiced. They moved in perfect synchronicity, each step a declaration of forward motion. I'd pulled over and watched until my phone buzzed — a work email about the merger, another **bull**shit crisis demanding my attention. I'd turned the car around and gone back to the apartment instead.

Now I stood at the window, watching the city darkening. The note she'd left was still on the table: I love you, but I don't like who we've become.

I thought about the way **running** had always cleared my head, how **swimming** made me feel weightless, how **baseball** had been my father's religion and then my escape. I thought about the **vitamin** D deficiency the doctor had mentioned, the way my body had been crying out for sunlight I hadn't bothered to find.

And I thought about Sara, about the way I'd taken a **bull** in a china shop approach to everything except what mattered. I'd optimized my career, my investments, my workout routine. I hadn't optimized us.

Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow I'd call her. Tomorrow I'd start figuring out how to be someone who didn't lose the things that mattered.

But for tonight, I just stood at the window, watching the city breathe without me, and finally let myself cry.