The Weight of Unspoken Things

The conference room overlooked the harbor, where gray **water** slapped against the pilings with rhythmic indifference. Marcus pressed his sweating **palm** against the glass, leaving a ghostly print that vanished within seconds. At forty-seven, he'd become invisible—the kind of middle manager who could disappear from the org chart without anyone noticing.

"The market's still bullish," Chen droned from the head of the table, his voice thick with the kind of bullshit corporate optimism that made Marcus's teeth ache. "We're not missing this **bull** run."

Marcus thought of Elena at home, probably watching him through the camera of their newborn son, watching the feeds come through the coaxial **cable** they'd never upgraded to fiber, her face illuminated in the blue light of streamed infidelity. He'd known about the affair for three months—a junior architect with teeth too white and a tendency to overuse the word 'synergy.' Marcus had done nothing.

He looked down at his lunch. The hotel chef had arranged baby **spinach** leaves with surgical precision around a slab of salmon that tasted of refrigerator indifference. Spinach. The same vegetable his mother had forced upon him fifty years ago, promising strength. He felt nothing but hollow.

"Marcus? You with us?"

He blinked. Chen was watching him, along with three other executives whose names he'd learned yesterday and already forgotten.

"Just thinking about the Q3 projections," Marcus lied smoothly, the lie sliding off his tongue like the old pro he'd become.

"Good man." Chen turned back to his presentation.

Marcus pressed his palm against the glass again. Outside, the water kept slapping the pilings, indifferent to bull markets, to cable bills, to spinach, to the quiet unraveling of a life that had seemed, not long ago, like something he'd chosen.