The drowning room

The glass of water sat on her nightstand, stagnant since Tuesday. Five days and it hadn't moved. Like her marriage, like the promotion she'd been passed over for, like the yoga routine she'd abandoned in February.

Across the room, the cable box blinked its persistent red light. She should cancel it. Another $89 each month for channels she never watched, absorbing dramas about people who actually lived lives while hers streamed by in grainy resolution.

A thud echoed through the thin walls. Again. The neighbors above with their furniture rearrangement project, or whatever it was they did at 2 AM. Their cat — the orange one that slunk through the hallway like it owned the building — probably knocked something over. She'd seen it yesterday on the fire escape, watching her with those judgmental yellow eyes.

She swallowed another vitamin D capsule. Her doctor had recommended them after she complained about fatigue. "Seasonal affective disorder," he'd diagnosed, though she suspected it was just regular affective disorder now. The supplements came in enormous doses, each pill promising something her body couldn't produce on its own anymore. Happiness. Energy. The will to leave bed before noon.

Her phone buzzed. Mark. Again. Three missed calls tonight alone. He wanted his baseball glove back. The signed one from when they'd gone to that game in 2019, back when they still made memories instead of just accumulating possessions. He'd left it behind during his final trip to the apartment, the one where he'd taken the coffee maker but somehow forgotten his lucky glove.

She considered the water glass. Maybe she should drink it. Maybe she should dump it out. Maybe she should just let it evaporate, like everything else.

The cat yowled somewhere in the building. The cable box continued its silent vigil. Another vitamin, another night, another collection of things she couldn't bring herself to fix or finish or finally, finally let go of.

She lay back and watched the water glass catch the streetlamp's glow through the window. Something about it looked almost sacred. Or maybe that was just what loneliness did to everything eventually.