Swimming with Ghosts

The pool at 3 AM was a cathedral of silence, the water still except for the ripples she carved with each stroke. Maria hadn't slept properly in three weeks—not since the merger announcement, not since her team started getting picked off one by one like ducks in a shooting gallery. She swam laps now instead of sleeping, her body moving through water while her mind churned through spreadsheets and severance packages.

Her **dog** waited on the deck, Buster's golden retriever eyes following her back and forth. He'd been her ex-husband's idea of a compromise—we can't have kids, but we can have a dog. Now Buster was the only living thing that depended on her, and some days that felt like too much responsibility.

"You're becoming a **zombie**," her sister had said over drinks yesterday, eyeing Maria's dark circles. "One of those corporate undead, still walking through meetings but soul dead inside." Maria had laughed, but the joke landed too close to the bone.

She surfaced, gasping, water streaming down her face. In that moment between strokes, she remembered her father's **baseball** glove, leather worn soft as butter, how he'd taught her to catch in their backyard until sunset. He'd died when she was twenty-two, and somewhere along the way, she'd traded those summer evenings for quarterly reports and stock options.

The corporate world had a way of making you forget you were ever young, ever alive. **Swimming** was the only thing that silenced the noise now—the water holding her, weightless and anonymous, while somewhere above, the city slept on without her.

Maria climbed out, dripping onto the concrete, Buster greeting her with a tail thumping against the deck chair. She wrapped herself in a towel, the night air cold against her skin. Tomorrow she'd go back to the office, smile in meetings, pretend she still cared about synergies and deliverables. But tonight, in the dark water with her dog waiting, she remembered what it felt like to be alive.