The Art of Drowning Quietly

The notification lit up her **iphone** at 2:47 AM. Sarah's stomach hollowed before she even looked. Some instinct, animal and sharp, knew what was coming.

**You up?**

Three weeks after Mark moved out. Three weeks of pretending everything was fine at work, laughing at the right times during meetings, eating **vitamin** gummies that tasted like artificial strawberries and broken promises.

She typed **Can't sleep** then backspaced. Typed **Go to hell** then backspaced. Finally: **What do you want?**

The dots bounced. Deleted.

Sarah threw the phone across the room. It landed on the pile of Mark's stuff she'd been meaning to return — his lucky **hat** from that concert in 2019, the one where they'd danced until 3 AM and she'd thought, *this is it, this is the person.* Now the hat smelled like his shampoo and the cologne she'd bought him for Christmas, and looking at it made her want to vomit.

Her sister had sent her an article yesterday: **How to Rebuild After Divorce.** Number seven suggested reconnecting with nature. Sarah had laughed so hard she cried, then booked a weekend at a cabin in Montana because she was that desperate.

Now she stood at the edge of the lake at dawn, air so cold it burned her lungs. The water was black and still and looked like drowning would be the easiest thing in the world.

Something splashed in the distance. A **bear**, maybe. The rental agent had warned her about them. **Keep your food sealed,** she'd said. **They're more scared of you than you are of them.**

Sarah wondered if that was true. If fear was something you could measure and compare.

She'd been **swimming** every day since the separation, pushing herself until her muscles burned, until she was too exhausted to think about Mark's laughter in the mornings, the way he made coffee, the way he'd stopped touching her six months before he left. The water was the only place where her body felt like hers again — weightless and anonymous and alone.

Her phone buzzed from the cabin. She'd left it inside.

Good.

Sarah waded into the lake. The cold shocked her breath away. She kept going until the water touched her chin, until her skin went numb, until she couldn't feel anything at all.

Behind her, the sun began to rise. One more day to get through.

She could do this. She could.

She dipped underwater and held her breath, counting the seconds, wondering how long she could stay under before she had to come up for air.