The Last Inning

Marcus found the **baseball** in his father's nightstand, wrapped in a sock that still carried the faint scent of cedar and stale tobacco. It was signed by some player from 1986, the autograph fading into the leather like a memory refusing to die completely.

"You know, corporations are just **pyramids**," Sarah had told him three nights ago, her voice slurring from the wine she'd consumed while scrolling through her **iPhone**, her face illuminated by its ghostly blue glow. "Bottom layer feeds the top. And we're somewhere in the middle, thinking we're climbing."

She'd left the next morning with a single suitcase. No goodbye, just a text message Marcus had read while eating cold **spinach** from a container meant for three, now serving one.

Now he stood in his dead father's apartment, palm of his hand pressed against the cool glass of the window, looking out at the **palm** trees swaying in the California heat. His father had loved these trees—had moved west specifically to be near them, trading snow and family for endless summer and isolation.

The **iPhone** buzzed in his pocket. Sarah again. Or maybe work. He didn't check.

Marcus gripped the baseball, feeling the stitching against his thumb. His father had taken him to games, once. Before the drinking got bad, before the silences grew long and cutting, before Marcus learned that some hurts calcified into things you could carry but never heal.

"Baseball," his father had said, the last time they spoke. "It's just waiting. Mostly nothing happens. But you have to stand there anyway."

Marcus placed the ball in his pocket, beside the silent phone. Outside, the palm trees kept swaying, indifferent and beautiful in equal measure. He realized then that pyramids were built from stones that once meant something to someone. That love and grief and all the messy in-between—these were just materials for building something larger than yourself.

He took a picture of nothing in particular and sent it to Sarah. No caption. Just proof he was still standing there, waiting.