Pool Running

The water silenced everything—her phone, her thoughts, the marriage collapsing in bite-sized text messages. Elena moved through the blue, pool running in the deep end, the buoyancy belt keeping her afloat as she churned her legs against resistance she couldn't quite escape.

Her physical therapist had called it 'aquatic jogging.' She called it the only hour she didn't feel like she was drowning.

"You never mentioned her," she'd said to Mark last night, her voice strangely calm. The goldfish bowl on the counter had caught her eye then—a carnival prize from their second date, still alive after three years of tank changes and overfeeding, swimming in endless circles with that terrible open-mouthed expression. Why had she thought of the fish?

Now, in the pool, she forced her legs harder. The other lap swimmers moved like metronomes in the lanes beside her, but she was stationary, running nowhere, suspended in blue.

She'd been running from the conversation for weeks. That was the word she kept coming back to. Running—away, toward, it didn't matter anymore. Mark had called the other woman 'a friend.' Elena had stopped listening after 'emotional.' Emotional affairs were still affairs. Emotional neglect was still neglect.

The goldfish had been gasping at the surface this morning. She'd forgotten to feed it for three days.

Her ankle throbbed—old injury, older pain. That's why she was here, running in water instead of on pavement. The doctor said she'd be fine. The therapist said she needed to be patient. Mark said he needed time to figure things out.

Time. The goldfish, if studies were to be believed, lived in three-second loops. No memory, no past, only the eternal now. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe she could unlearn everything she'd discovered, unread the messages, unsee the way Mark looked at his phone.

She stopped running and let herself float, face up to the ceiling, water in her ears. The world went muffled, distant. Her arms spread wide. She could stay like this forever, suspended between surface and bottom, between knowing and not knowing, between the woman she was and whoever came next.

The lifeguard blew the whistle. Adult swim was over.

Elena pulled herself upright, water streaming from her hair. She'd go home. She'd feed the fish. She'd pack a bag. She'd run, finally, really run—toward whatever came next.