The Art of Drowning Slowly

Maya stood in the cereal aisle, her iPhone vibrating against her palm like an anxious heart. Another text from him. She didn't need to read it to know the words—apologies, promises, the same script he'd been reading from since she found the receipts three months ago.

She'd come for spinach, something green and living, something that didn't remind her of their apartment together, of the way he used to make fun of her for eating "rabbit food" while he drank himself into a stupor watching baseball highlights. The irony wasn't lost on her—she was the one staying, trying, while he treated their relationship like a game to be won and then abandoned.

The fluorescent lights hummed, and Maya felt herself drowning in the ordinary domestic violence of air conditioning and muzak. She reached for a bottle of water, her hand trembling. The condensation slick against her skin reminded her of that night in the shower, when she'd realized she could wash away his touch but not the way he'd gotten inside her head, made her question her own reality.

Her phone lit up again. Not him this time—a reminder: "Vitamin D deficiency can contribute to depression." As if happiness could be synthesized, packaged, purchased. As if the right combination of supplements could fix what three years of gaslighting had broken.

A baseball cap in the next aisle caught her eye. Mets. He'd always said they'd go to a game together, someday. Someday when he wasn't too busy, too tired, too anything except present.

Maya put down the water. She left the spinach. She walked out of the store into the crushing heat of summer, her phone finally silent, finally still, and for the first time in three years, she could hear herself think.