Poolside Pyramid

The **pool** was empty at 6 AM, chlorine shimmering under fluorescent lights. Mark sat on the edge, legs in the water, contemplating the **pyramid** scheme he'd sunk half his savings into last year. His ex-wife would have called him a fool—she'd always had an eye for **bullshit**, even when he couldn't see it himself.

She'd left him three months ago. Took the dog, left the **baseball** collection he'd spent twenty years building. "You're thirty-eight and still playing at being a kid," she'd said, throwing her clothes into a suitcase. "Grow up, Mark."

Now he swam every morning before work, laps back and forth in the silence. Like a goldfish in a bowl, going nowhere.

His phone buzzed on the bench. Another email from the "investment group"—the **pyramid** had collapsed, of course. They always did. He'd known it was shaky, but he'd been desperate for something to change. For a breakthrough. For anything other than the slow suffocation of his middle-management job at an insurance company that processed claims for people who'd lost everything.

He pulled himself from the water, muscles aching. The locker room smelled like mildew and old sweat. A younger man—maybe twenty-five—stood at the sink, eating **spinach** from a plastic container. The kid looked terrified, checking his phone every ten seconds.

"First time?" Mark asked.

The kid nodded. "Wife left me. I read somewhere that cold water helps with shock."

Mark laughed bitterly. "It doesn't. But eventually you get used to being cold."

He thought about telling the kid about the **baseball** cards, the **pyramid** scheme, the way his wife had looked at him like he was a stranger that last year. How **bullshit** accumulates like sediment, slowly burying you until you can't remember what you sounded like before.

Instead he patted the kid's shoulder. "Good luck with the **spinach**."

Walking to his car, Mark realized he hadn't felt anything in months. Not really. Just the slow erosion of hope, lap after lap, in that chlorinated **pool**. But the kid's terror—sharp, fresh, immediate—reminded him of something he'd forgotten: the possibility that someday, he might actually wake up.

He stopped at the grocery store on his way to work. Bought a bag of **spinach**. Something had to change, even if he had to force it down.