The Art of Floating

The pool water was colder than Elena remembered, or maybe she was just thinner now, less insulated against the world. She floated on her back, ears submerged, letting the muffled sounds of the party above become distant, irrelevant. Swimming had always been her escape—from the grief counselor's questions, from her mother's concerned voicemails, from the empty nursery they'd finally painted over last spring.

Through the rippling distortion, she watched her iPhone pulse on the pool deck where she'd left it. Another text from Julian, probably. He'd been sending them for three weeks now, since he moved into the apartment across from their favorite coffee shop. Small confessions about how he should have fought harder, how he still loved her. She hadn't replied once.

She drifted toward the shallow end, where a seven-year-old girl crouched beside a decorative fountain, dropping pellets into the water. The goldfish rose to the surface, their orange mouths opening and closing like tiny, hungry prayers. Elena's grandmother had kept goldfish in a bowl on her windowsill, swearing they were reincarnated ancestors come back to watch over the living. She'd died believing it, whispering secrets to them while her family argued over her will in the next room.

"You want one?" the girl asked, holding out a pellet.

Elena treaded water, suddenly aware of how she must look—a thirty-six-year-old woman floating aimlessly in a child's pool, fully clothed.

"No thank you," she said. "I think they've had enough."

The girl nodded solemnly and fed the fish anyway.

Back on the deck, Elena's phone lit up with a notification. Not Julian this time—her fertility clinic, confirming tomorrow's appointment. She'd scheduled it the morning after Julian left, before she'd decided some things weren't worth fixing, some holes were too deep to fill.

The goldfish continued their patient circling, trapped in their beautiful fountain, fed by a stranger's hand, watched by an audience that saw only their bright colors, never their transparent bodies, never what swam beneath the surface.

Elena dove underwater, letting the silence fill her ears, and stayed there until her lungs burned, until she had to choose between surfacing and surrendering to whatever waited in the dark.