Palm Lines in the Morning

Marc stared at the vitamin on his tongue — C, 1000mg, bright orange and impossibly small. How many mornings had he stood here, swallowing these tiny promises of health while his soul slowly decayed? The palm trees outside his bathroom window swayed in the California heat, their fronds like exhausted fingers reaching toward a sky he rarely saw anymore.

He was thirty-four and felt like a zombie. Not the pop-culture kind, all blood and brains — worse. The corporate kind. The kind that sat in open-plan offices and nodded in meetings and sent emails at 11 PM while life happened somewhere else, to people who still remembered how to feel things.

"You okay?" Sarah had asked two nights ago, her palm resting on his arm. He'd barely registered the touch. "You've been... somewhere else."

"Just tired," he'd said, already reaching for his phone. She'd pulled her hand back, and something in her eyes had shifted — the moment he realized he'd been mourning a marriage that was still technically alive.

He spat the vitamin into the sink, watched it swirl down the drain. Then another. Then the whole bottle — clatter, rattle, flush. Goodbye, manufactured optimism.

His palm pressed against the cool mirror, leaving a fogged outline. Life line. Head line. Heart line, now that he looked at it — shorter than he'd expected, but not finished. Not yet.

The zombie feeling persisted, but something else stirred beneath it. Anger, maybe. Or the memory of hunger.

He picked up his phone, opened his email, and typed: "I quit."

Then he texted Sarah: "I want to try again. Really try. Dinner tonight? My treat, my phone stays in the car."

The palm trees were still swaying, throwing shadows across his empty hands. But for the first time in years, he saw them. Really saw them.

"Okay," Sarah replied. "8 PM. Don't be late."

He stood there, palm still against the glass, and watched his own reflection slowly come alive.