Palm Lines in the Break Room

Maya pressed her **palm** against the cold vending machine glass, tracing the condensation patterns like lifelines she no longer recognized. At 34, she'd become what her college self would've called a **zombie**—dead inside, mechanically going through the motions of corporate life that some optimistic recruiter once sold her as a career.

"You look like shit," Elena said, sliding into the chair across from her. Her oldest **friend**, and somehow still her only one. "That presentation this morning? You were channeling something dark."

Maya filled her paper cup with lukewarm **water** from the cooler, watching it swirl like her thoughts—murky, directionless, somehow still moving. "My father called yesterday. He wants me to come home for Rosh Hashanah. I told him I'm too busy closing the Q3 reports."

"You hate those reports," Elena said. "You hate this job. You hate that you're still doing it."

"And yet." Maya's laugh came out wrong—too sharp, too hollow.

Elena reached across the table, turned Maya's hand over, and pressed her thumb into the **palm**. "Your lifeline's still here. That's something."

"You don't believe in that crap."

"No." Elena's eyes found hers, something fierce beneath the weariness they shared. "But I believe you're still here too."

The **water** dispenser hummed behind them, a constant background noise like the passage of time they both tried to ignore. Maya thought about the **zombie** hours she spent in spreadsheets, the way she'd stopped writing poetry, stopped calling her mother, stopped noticing the sunset from her fifteenth-floor apartment window.

"What if it's too late?" she whispered.

"Then we'll be **zombies** together." Elena squeezed her hand. "But I'm betting against it."

Outside, autumn leaves skittered across the pavement—dead things dancing in the wind. Maya finished her **water** and stood up. The quarterly report could wait. Some things couldn't.